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^13^ 



THE 



National Controversy; 



OR, 



THE VOICE OF THE FATHERS 



UPON THE 



SrjTE OF THE COUNrRT, 



By JOSEPH C. STILES. 




^ 




NEW YORK : 
RuDD & Carleton, 130 Grand Street. 

BROOKS BUILDING, COR. OF BROADWAY. 

M DCCC LXI. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by 

JOSEPH C. STILES, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 

District of New York. 



E. CRAIGHEAD, 
Printer, Stcreotypcr, and Eleclrolype 

Caiton ISuiltiing, 

81, SS, and S5 Centre Street, 



PREFACE. 



There are three ways of investigating our national 
controversy. I may inquire, 1. To which of the con- 
tending parties the wrong is mainly attributable ; 2. 
Whether the principal blame lies at the door of the 
South ; or 3, at the door of the North. I have chosen 
the last. 

Let it be remembered it is not my object to labor 
directly to spread out the wrong-doings of the South. 
By so doing I should break up the logic, unity, and 
strength of the argument advanced to establish the end 
in view. If I am skilful, I shall do two things : to the 
best of my ability, prove the guilt of the North directly^ 
by pertinent argument ; and indirectly^ by sustainmg the 
defences of the South. By this course I do not lay 
myself open to the charge of 'prejudice. I set out to 
investigate one branch of the subject, and should not be 
censured because I do not introduce another. 

If my convictions are well founded, the causes of 
erroneous judgment may lie-at two points. The founda- 
tions of the justification of the South and of the crimi- 
nation of the North — or rather the facts and principles 



11 PREFACE. 

which decide the relative right or wrong of the parties 
— lie far back in the history of the country, and do not 
now exert their proper influence upon the public mind ; 
while the heated state of popular feelings, for many 
years, upon our vexed question, has thrown up a false 
halo which invests with still deeper obscurity the true 
moral features of our national strife. 

Touching the injluence of this appeal, may I remind 
the reader, that adverse views will certainly bring up the 
sins of the South and the defences of the North at every 
step. Yet he should not deem me unfair because I do 
not give them a hearing. All I ask of him is this — let 
him look at the fact or argument before him, give it a 
just consideration, and judge whether he should not in 
candor renounce in whole or in part some objection to the 
conduct of the South, or concede in whole or in part the 
charged misconduct of the North. I cannot now pro- 
mise to exhibit the same impartiality. My little book 
has already found its way into j^our hand. But this 
I will say — if the sentiment to which you object is 
unfounded — then may our Heavenly Father forgive the 
transgressor, nor permit his ignorance to damage you or 
any brother man on earth. If, however, that to which 
you object is truth and righteousness in the case — Oh, 
look at our beloved country ! and unite in my prayer 
that these pages may be sent home to do their work in 
the hearts of all our countrymen. 



THE NATIONAL CONTROYERSY. 



Our unhappy Country ! Is there anything in the his- 
tpry of the past which may relieve the complications of 
the present? Is there no class of truths, no course of 
argument, which can bring the people to one mind, and 
restore the happy confidence of early years ? The capi- 
tal wrong may lie at the South^ or it may be chargeable 
to the North. A southern man, by birth, sentiment, and 
sympathy, for our common country's sake, will not my 
northern brethren and countrymen, in all earnest heed, 
accept my invitation, and join me in the discussion of 
the four following propositions ? 

1. Were our northern fathers encouraged to expect 
that, within a short period after the formation of the con- 
stitution, slavery would disappear for ever ? 

2. Has the South transgressed her constitutional rela- 
tions to the subject of slavery, and encroached upon the 
JSTorth ? 

8. Has not the Korth violated her constitutional obliga- 
tions upon this subject, and encroached upon the South? 

4. Where shall we find the origin and the healing of 
this unhappy strife ? 

I. Were our fathers encouraged to ^'■expect that within a 
short period^ slavery would disappear for everV 

It is not contended that the South expressly stipulated 
in the constitution that slavery should be speedily abo 
lished; but the grand aggravating element of almost 



4 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

every modern charge is this: the history, principles, 
language, conduct, and condition, both of the IsTorth and 
of the South in that day, encouraged and measurably au- 
thorized " the father^ to expect that within a short period 
slavery would disappear for ever." We respectfully sub- 
mit whether every argument advanced to establish this 
expectation of the fathers does not involve a contradiction 
of the averment, and rather prove the endy^ring than the 
evanescent condition of the institution in early days. 

1. The declining state of slavery in the times of the 
fathers. — That the institution of slavery had long been 
dying out at the North is undeniable; but the very 
causes which worked decay at the North wrought invi- 
gofation at the South. The cold climate of the North, 
uncongenial to the African constitution of the negro, 
shortened his days, and diminished his strength and 
value ; while the warm climate of the South, more suit- 
able to his physical nature, proportionably augmented 
his powers, both of labor and of enjoyment. In like 
manner, it had been demonstrated that the commercial, 
manufactural, and skilful avocations of the North could 
extract but a profitless service from the contracted intel- 
lect of the negro, while the agricultural pursuits of the 
South found, in his remarkable physical endurance, even 
in a sultry climate, an exact provision for her simple 
culture of tobacco, indigo, and rice. Thus, that very 
intellectual and physical structure of the slave, which so 
naturally worked out his rapid disappearance from the 
North, must exert an equal power to secure his perma- 
nent value at the South. 

2. The anti-slavery spirit of the day. ~li cannot be denied 
that, during the debates which gave birth to our noble 



THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 6 

conrititution, anti-slavery principles were abundant!}^ and 
vehemently avowed, both by northern and by southern 
men. Let it be remembered, that the grand struggle 
lay between the Northern and the Middle States on the 
one hand, and the extreme Southern States on the other. 
Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, on many points 
sympathized with the North — on one, certainly, their 
anti-slavery zeal was even more conspicuous.* But 
he undertakes an arduous task who sits down to build 
up the " expectation" of the fathers upon the foundation 
of the anti-slavery sentiments of the day. It is freely 
granted that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, 
Eandolph, and other Eepresentatives of the northern tier 
of Southern States, were all in language decided, and 
some of them violent, opponents of the institution of 
slavery. Surely they were most noble men. Their like 
earth rarely sees. God knows we should deeply honor 
them, but not for the power of their anti-slavery prin- 
ciples. One fact speaks volumes. If we mistake not, 
every man of them lived and died a slaveholder : Wash- 
ington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, Randolph, and pro- 
bably every other prominent delegate from the South. 
We believe, moreover, that they all left their slaves 
in unlimited bondage, save Washington, who willed the 
liberty of his after the death of his widow. With entire 
respect, we are forced to inquire, what reason had our 
Southern fathers to expect that their principles would 
work the destruction of slavery in others, when they 
were too weak to abolish slaveholding in themselves ? 
We repeat it — what right had any man of that day to 
expect that the principles of our Southern fathers would 

* See Note A. 



6 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

do at a distance, in the hands of their posterity, what 
they did not do at home, in their own hands? 

ISTor did the anti-slavery principles of our Norihern 
fathers seem much more reliable. Franklin and Morris, 
Martin and Wilson, Lansing and Hamilton, Sherman 
and Elsworth, Gorham and Gerry, and a host of others, 
were noble and powerful men, well worthy of enrolment 
amongst the most distinguished and gallant patriots of 
the Kevolution. But as emancipationists^ they were 
entitled to no such praise. The Convention had well- 
nigh decided to limit the importation of slaves to the 
year 1800. General Pinckney, of South Carolina, moved 
to extend the privilege of importation to the year 1808. 
Where was the anti-slavery principle of our Northern 
fathers when this wide door of national slave-importation 
was thrown open? Massachusetts, by her delegate, 
seconded the motion; and though two slave States, 
Virginia and Delaware, voted against it, it is a fact that 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire voted 
unanimously in its favor, and carried the motion. Let 
it be remembered, that of all the Northern and Middle 
States, New Jersey and Pennsylvania were the only two 
who recorded a vote against the constitutional extension 
of the right of importation. Where, too, was the anti- 
slavery principle of our Northern flxthers, when a motion 
was introduced to levy a tax of ten dollars a head upon 
every slave thus imported ? 'Tis true they did deeply 
disrelish the proposition, and vainly endeavored to put 
a fair face upon the transaction ; yet when it was thus 
proposed, to all intents and purposes, to enrol slaves 
amongst the taxable commodities of commerce, the 
records of the country incontestably declare that not 



THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 7 

a single ISTorthern vote was entered up against the 
constitutional provision. We ask now, what reason 
had our Northern fathers, or we, their sons, to expect 
that their anti-slavery principles would accomplish the 
rapid downfall of slavery in the country, when with one 
hand they themselves opened the door to the extensive 
introduction of slaves into the country, and with the 
other graded them as property on their arrival ? 

The singular inefficiency of open opposition to slavery 
in the days of the fathers may find its secret partly in 
two things. First, it was temperate, not maddened. 
Had the fanaticism which, to a greater or less extent, 
imbues so large a portion of Northern mind in our day, 
equally affected anti-slavery men in the Constitutional 
Convention, they would have burst a world sooner than 
consent to be pent up and tied down as revolutionary 
anti-slavery was and is by the American Constitution. 
Again, anti-slavery was then political, not religious. 
The Honorable John Jay informs us, " that prior to the 
Revolution, the great body of our people had been so 
long accustomed to the practice and convenience of 
slavery, that very few of them ever doubted the pro- 
priety or rectitude of it!" Our Revolution, then, was 
the parent of the anti-slavery sentiments of the fathers. 
They had so much to say about natural rights, that they 
very naturally discovered a sort of incompatibility 
between the practice of slavery and the principles of the 
Revolution ; nor can it be doubted that this sense of incom- 
patibility was greatly quickened in all American minds 
at this time by Tom Paine's infidel but popular and 
powerful discussion of associated topics. But bear in 
mind, it was a sentiment just started up and sustained 



8 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

bj an excited glance at the political surface of things, 
and had yet taken no such hold of the mind as enabled 
it to overthrow the long entrenched lust of gain arrayed 
against it on every hand. Now the protection of natural 
rights is not the great work which the Scriptures assign 
to man on earth. Remember ! not one syllable had God 
uttered to incite man to set a high value upon his right 
of property, or his right of character, or his right of 
liberty, or even his right of life. On the contrary. Sal- 
vation ! Salvation 1 is the great order of the day. And 
if our Northern fathers had but been content to carry out 
the principle they so frequently and honorably avowed, 
that " the moralitj^ and wisdom of slavery are considera- 
tions belonging to the states themselves :" had they 
exercised the Christian sobriety to reflect, that if the 
villany of man had torn away the poor slave from his 
native country, the mercy of Grod had well supplied the 
home of his captivity with most valuable facilities for 
his social and spiritual redemption : and had they taught 
themselves to honor the Southern master for all that was 
worthy in the treatment of his protege, congratulated 
him on his slave's improvement in character and condi- 
tion, and kindly co-operated with him, to the extent of 
their ability, in all wise undertakings for the good of his 
slaves, the Christianity, the noble Christianity of the prin- 
ciple would have made its powerful mark both upon the 
bond and the free. But the anti-slavery of the fathers 
had neither the had power of fanaticism^ nor the good 
power of Christianity. In the Southern man it failed to 
do what it purposed to accomplish. And in the Northern 
man it came near to yielding to that which it was prin- 
cipled to resist. 



THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 9 

Two things, therefore, are perfectly clear. On the 
one hand, the fathers had no reason to expect that their 
principles of opposition to slavery would work its speedy 
banishment from society ; on the other, they had great 
reason to expect its sturdy endurance — for there must 
have resided somewhere in that institution a mighty 
power of self preservation — since it did so long and so 
perfectly paralyse all the adverse efforts of the mightiest 
men of the nation. North and South. 

3. Language: pledges and predictions. — It is contended 
that the language of the framers of the Constitution, 
uttered in their prolonged conventional debates, afford 
abundant testimony of a prevalent conviction in that 
day, that the institution of slavery was near its end ; and 
moreover, that the half-way concessions of the South, 
and predictions of the North, contributed to warrant 
such a persuasion. 

I apprehend that this is a great mistake. The records 
of the Constitutional Convention furnish two classes of 
utterances bearing upon this subject. 

The first respects the abolition of the slave trade. The 
fraternal and powerful appeals of Northern brethren 
did sometimes, though very rarely, wring out from 
the extreme Southern delegate some such sympathetic 
response as the following — " If the Southern States were 
let alone, they will probably of themselves stop importa- 
tion. He would himself, as a citizen of South Carolina, 
vote for it." (Charles Pinckney.) " If the States be all 
left at liberty on this subject. South Carolina may per- 
haps by degrees, do, of herself, what is wished, as Vir- 
ginia and Maryland already have done." (C. C. Pinckney.) 
" Georgia, left to herself, may probably put a stop to the 

1* 



10 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

evil." (Baldwin.) Langdon, of liew Hampshire, ventured 
to extract some hope from the opinions expressed that 
" the Southern States left to themselves will cease to 
import slaves." Other Northern delegates reminded the 
convention of the suggestion of Southern members that 
"Carolina and Georgia were themselves disp^osed to get 
rid of the importation of slaves in a short time." But 
Northern members were not long left to a state 
of conjecture concerning Southern purpose upon this 
subject. 

The very delegates from the South, who, under pow- 
erful appeals, had encouraged some little hope of the 
abatement of the slave trade, when they perceived that 
Northern members were relying upon their guarded 
suggestions, substantially recalled all they had declared, 
and affirmed their solemn conviction that they never 
could persuade their respective states "to adopt the con- 
stitution," if importation was forbidden : that " Carolina 
and Georgia must have slaves" — and that the rejection 
of the importing clause " was an exclusion of them from 
the Union." While other Southern delegates, yet more 
decided, abruptly exclaimed, that every expectation of 
the North upon this subject would be disappointed — 
" that the people of the South were not such fools as to 
give up so important an interest," &c. Nor was it long 
ere the Northern delegates themselves abandoned all 
hope of arresting the traffic. Wilson, of Pennsylvania^ 
avowed his firm conviction " that the Southern States 
could not be members of the Union if the clause (import- 
ing) should be rejected." Governeur Morris, of the same 
State, after a long and gallant opposition, was "compelled 
to express his decided belief that the Southern States 



THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 11 

would never confederate on terms that would deprive 
them of the slave trade." Eoger Sherman, of Con- 
necticut, counselled, that " it was better to let the Stntes 
import slaves, if they made it a sine qua nonJ'' Oliver 
Ellsw-orth, of Connecticut, " declared his willingness to 
take the clause as it is. Let every State import what it 
pleases. What enriches a part enriches the whole. • Let 
us not intermeddle. This widening of opinions had a 
threatening aspect. If we do not agree on this moderate 
and middle ground, he was afraid we should lose two 
States — and have several confederations — and not with- 
out bloodshed." Such at large was the graceful yield- 
ing of the North before the unflinching demand of the 
South. 

So exactly stood and struggled the parties, when sla- 
very itself became the bone of contention. During the 
early part of the debate, a very few expressions were 
uttered — not by Southern, but by Northern delegates — 
indicating an opinion that slavery would decline. Sher- 
man remarked that "the abolition of slavery is going 
on in the United States, and that the good sense of the 
several states would probably, b}^ degrees, complete it." 
Ellsworth, his colleague, supposed that "as population 
increases, poor laborers will become so plenty as to ren- 
der slaves useless. Slavery in time will not be a speck 
in our country." But the battle raged desperately on 
this main issue. On the one hand, the assailants pro- 
nounced the system of slavery "a neflirious institution" 
— " the curse of Heaven on the community where it 
prevailed" — "inconsistent with the principles of the 
revolution" — "dishonorable to American character" — 
" pernicious alike to morals and to manners " — " pre- 



12 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

venting immigration of whites, tlie strength and riches 
of a country " — " in social development a desert and a 
wilderness beside the budding fields of freedom" — " in 
the state, a weakness and a burden through liability to 
insurrection, which the North is bound to suppress," &c., 
&c. On the other hand the Southern delegates respond : 
— "That slavery is justified by the example of all the 
world, since in all ages half of mankind have been 
slaves " — " is a blessing to the subject, for it civilizes the 
savage and converts the pagan " — " to the whole Union, 
for the more slaves, the more the produce, and therefore 
the more employment for the carrying trade " — " the 
more consumption, and therefore the more revenue to 
the treasury of our common country." " Slaves raise 
the value of lands " — " supply armies with food and 
clothing, and may become soldiers themselves." " To 
us of Carolina and Georgia, slavery is as necessary as a 
home, in this latitude; for who else upon earth could 
cultivate rice and indigo in our sultry swamps ? " 
" Entertaining such views, as free and independent 
states, we shall assuredly preserve our domestic institu- 
tion." On this point, as on the other, the North gave 
way before the unyielding adhesion of the South to the 
claims of her social organization. 

Thus, candor compels us to conclude that so far as 
language is concerned, " the fathers " had no encourage- 
ment to expect that slavery would rapidly disappear. 
On the contrary, the strong luords of southern men must 
have carried home deeply to the hearts of Northern 
delegates, the resolute, inflexible purpose of the South 
to maintain their ancient institution against all opposi- 
tion. 



THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHEKS. 13 

4. Conduct: relative^ yielding^ and controlling. — There 
was nothing in the conduct of the parties, nothing in the 
practical issues of their deliberations, which justified the 
slightest expectation of " the fathers " that slavery was 
djdng out in the land. On the contrary, the pro-slavery 
delegates carried their main points so perfectly, against 
such powerful odds, that, to the end of time, the specta- 
tor of the conflict in the published debates of the con- 
stitutional convention, will pronounce the Southern 
victory an inexplicable enigma, apart from an enormous 
inherent poioer in the slavery of that day^ ivhich the fathers 
must have felt. 

The South held their slaves both as persons and as 
property^ and insisted that the constitution of the country 
should distinctly recognise this two-fold claim. When 
they presented their first point, that slaves as persons 
should have a representation in the government, — the 
delegates of the Northern and Middle states were out- 
raged. They substantially declared — "If you your- 
selves will first treat them as men^ and give them the 
dignities oi freedom^ we will cheerfully welcome them to 
a participation in citizenship with our people and our- 
selves. But while you strip them of their humanity, 
and degrade them to a level with the brutes of your 
plantations, we cannot go back and tell our constituents 
that we have allowed you to go still further, and enrol 
your servile .dependents in the same political category 
with themselves. They would not endure the revolting 
degradation, and we cannot, we will not do it." The 
delegates of the South, in substance, reply: — "Slaves 
are our wealthy and wealth should be represented in the 
government instituted largely for its protection. Slaves 



14 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

are persoiis dwelling in the country, and working for it, 
and if inferior in intelligence and influence, we do not 
demand for them an equal representation. They are our 
fellow-men^ with rights of life, labor, and happiness to be 
guarded ; as such^ we expect the government to recog- 
nise them. Finally, we are sovereign and independent 
states ; we must look to the vital interests of ourselves 
and our people ; and if you nullify the half of our popu- 
lation, make our slaves a dead letter in the government 
of the country, and thus destroy the force of our social 
organization, we shall never belong to your Union." 
It was ultimately decided, after a hard struggle, that a 
clause should be inserted in the constitution, securing to 
slaves a " three-fifths " representation. (Art. 1, Sec. 2.) 
Let it be observed, too, that by the constitutional rule, 
"o?iVed" taxation is of persons. Slaves, therefore, are 
treated a second time in the constitution as persons — by 
being subjected to a " three-fiftlis direct taxation." Thus 
there are four ways in which the constitution clearly 
establishes the personality of slaves : by its census^ its 
representation^ its taxation clauses, and by expressly 
speaking of them as " other ^erso?25." 

When the second grand claim of the South was brought 
forward, that slaves should be recognised as property^ the 
anti-slavery sentiment of the convention was still more 
deeply shocked. But a similar struggle ultimately led 
to a similar issue. It is true you do not find the word 
"slave" in the constitution; neither in the thirty pages of 
our chartered rights, do you find any such phrases as 
"the nation," — "our country," — "our government," — 
" national treasury," — ^'national legislature," — " national 
government." The reason is this. Those who framed 



THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 15 

that instrument well knew that they had a thousand 
conflicting interests to reconcile. They therefore resolved 
to employ no word or phrase which would give umbrage 
to any class or party in the country. Yet, as Luther 
Martin says, " they were willing to admit into their sys- 
tem those things which the expression signified." There 
were those in the country who loved the Confederation^ 
and opposed " the formation of a national government." 
The convention accomplished the work^ the formation of 
a national government, but avoided all offensive lan- 
guage. There were those, too, who abhorred slavery. 
The convention here in like manner avoided the term, 
but admitted the thing the term expressed. 

You will find property in man clearly implied in the 
clause requiring the rendition of fugitives. (Art. 4, Sec. 2.) 
Fix your thought upon the operation. Form a concep- 
tion, if you can, of the shadow of a reason for the 
restoration of the fugitive, apart from the fact that the 
master has a right to control his servant — has 2i property in 
his services. How clearly is the doctrine taught by the 
language of the first resolution passed upon this subject 
by the convention, August 27th. The closing words 
are these : — " shall be delivered up to the person justly 
claiming their service or labor." By the framers of the 
constitution, obviously the master has a just claim to his 
servant — 2^ property in hi^ services. When this section 
was put into the hands of the " committee of style and 
language " — mark ! it comes out thus : " but shall be 
deUvered up on claim of the party to whom such service 
or labor may be due^ Thus the constitution decides 
that tlie services of the slave are the due of his master. 
His master owns them — has a property in them. In like 



16 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

manner, the imposition of a tax or duty on the imported 
slave, with equal clearness, establishes the constitutional 
doctrine oi slave-property. " A tax, or duty, not exceeding 
ten dollars for each person.'" (Art, 1, Sec. 9.) How pal- 
pable is the constitutional recognition here. The slave 
is set down amongst imports and taxed as such. No 
wonder Roger Sherman "was opposed to a tax on 
slaves, as making the matter worse, because it implied 
they were property.'^ When he repeated his objection 
the next day, Mr. Goram, Mass., attempted to put a bet- 
ter face upon the transaction, and " thought that Mr, 
Sherman should consider the duty not as implying that 
slaves are property, but as a discouragement to the 
importation of them." But Sherman honestly replied, 
that the smallness of the duty showed that revenue 
was the object, not the discouragement of the importa- 
tion." A second attempt was made to break the force 
of its application to slaves, by considering the tax as 
equally extending to the " migration " of foreigners. But 
unfortunately, the very words of the constitution destroy 
the effort — for the word ." migration " is dropped in the 
latter part of the clause, and the " tax " is " imposed " 
on such ^^iinportation^^ only. When this section was 
called up on Friday 2'ith, Mr. Livingston, of New York, 
offered an amendment allowing importation, but impos- 
ing a tax or duty in the words, " at a rate not exceeding 
the average of the duties laid on imports.''^ Here cer- 
tainly the language places slaves in the category of 
^^ imports," and of course adjudges them property. The 
next day Mr. Baldwin, in order to define more accurately 
the " average duty," moved to strike out the second part, 
the words — " average of the duty laid on imports " — 



THE EXPECTATION" OF THE FATHERS. 17 

and insert " common impost on articles not enumerated." 
Thus the sentence would read, " a tax or duty may be 
imposed on such importation, at a rate not exceeding the 
common imposts on articles not enumerated." As this 
motion was agreed to nem. con., the entire mind of the con- 
vention, North and South, hereby enrolled slaves among 
^^ articles ^^ of import, pronounced the tax upon them an 
" impost,''^ and of course, stamped them as property, since 
they were "articles" "imported" under "impost." Sher- 
man felt this truth forcibly, and objected a third time, 
" that this second part acknowledges property in many 
King and Langdon, both northern men, very simply con- 
sidered " the second part (the taxing) as the price of the 
first part (the importation)." Eufus King had previously 
" remarked on the exemption of slaves from duty, whilst 
every other import was subjected to it, as an irregularity, 
which could not fliil to strike the commercial sagacity of 
the North." Whereupon Gen. Pinckney, adopting his 
language, moved " to commit the clause that slaves 
might be made liable to an equal tax with other imports,^'' 
" admitting in the same connexion, that slaves might be 
* didiecV like other imports." On the same day, Wilson 
objected, " as the section now stands, all articles imported 
are to be taxed, slaves alone exem'ptP This is, in fact, a 
bounty on that article. 

So much for the testimony of the framers of the con- 
stitution, individually. As to the mind of the conven- 
tion at large — Elias Boudinot, a member of the Continen- 
tal Congress, in 1788, from New Jersey, " was well in- 
formed that the tax or duty of $10 was provided instead 
of the five per cent, ad valorem, and was so expressly under- 
stood by all parties in the convention," that this tax was 



18 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

deemed necessarj^, as " doing justice to all the States, 
and equalizing duties throughout the Union." (Elliott, 
vol. iv. 215.) The conduct of government in demanding 
and receiving from the British throne a pecuniary com- 
pensation for slaves abducted in the Revolution, is her 
own legislative construction of the constitution ; while the 
numerous express decisions of the Supreme Court — that 
slaves are property, is her judicial interpretation of it. 

How clearl}^, variously, indisputably, does the consti- 
tution recognise the slave-2^ro2:)erty doctrine of the South. 
Slaves are to be ^'■delivered up^^ as ^'■justly'''' claimed, and 
^^due^^ to the master: are to be taxed as " imports ^^ and 
" articles^'' whose introduction should be subject to " im- 
2yost,^^ and ^^ priced " and " dutied^^ like other im23orts " ad 
valorem,^^ whose " exeraption " from taxation might be com- 
plained of as an " inequality " which ''''commercial " sagacity 
will soon detect : and whose taxation was understood by 
the entire convention as doing universal "y^s^/ce," and 
^'' equalizing duties^'' t]ivox\^\o\ii ^^ the Union :^^ for whose 
abduction the government demanded restitution, ad valo- 
rem, and who have been pronounced '^ property, ^^ and this 
without qualification, by the highest tribunal of the coun- 
try, from the formation of the constitution to the present 
da}^ We put it now to every fellow citizen in the coun- 
try, whatever be his principles or tastes, if the American 
constitution is to be interpreted by the established laws 
of construction, is he not bound in candor to concede 
that that document does clearly recognise slaves both as 
persons and as property f 

What a strong impression of the power of the principle 
of slavery in that day must have been made upon the 
mind of "the fathers," as they infixed, seriatim, the 



THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHEKS, 19 

unlimited extent of the Soutliern demands upon the face 
of the constitution ! Governeur Morris at one time 
acknowledged the amazement and " r/i7em?7ia " into which 
he was thrown by the stern impracticability of Southern 
adhesion to the slave-trade : at another, he was pressed 
back into a temper of hitter petulance^ by the advancing 
demands of Southern guarantees, and indignantly ex- 
claimed — w^hy attempt any longer to blend ^^ incovipatihle 
things^ " Let us at once take a friendly leave of each 
other :" and finally, when he saw one Southern claim 
after another incorporated into the heart of the constitu- 
tion, he sarcastically pronounced ^''domestic slavery'''' the 
most ^^ prominent feature in the aristocratic countenance 
of the proposed constitution." Did not that man feel to 
the very centre of his soul, that come whence it might, 
be it what it may, surely there is a living poiver in the 
slavery of this day. Did not Rufus King feel the present 
and fear the future power of slavery ? Counselling that 
they, the convention, should do justice to the South; he 
says, " he must be short-sighted, indeed, who does not 
foresee that when the Southern States should be more 
numerous than the ISTorthern (did this man imagine that 
slavery would die out in a day ?), they (the South) can 
and will hold a language that will awe us into justice! 
If they threaten to separate now, in case injury shall be 
done them, will their threats be less urgent or effectual 
when /orce shall back their demands ? Even in the inter- 
vening period there will be no point of time, at which 
they will not be able to say — do us justice or we 
will separate!" Luther Martin seemed to be trans- 
ported with mortification and rage when he called up 
before the Legislature of Maryland, the inexplicable power 



20 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

which had been exercised over the convention by South- 
ern men. He breaks out in the following strain — " This 
system of slavery, which hound hand and foot ten States 
in the Union, and placed thern at the mercy of the other three 
and under the most abject and servile subjection to them, 
was approved by the majority of the members of the 
convention." "Who doubts that that man and every other 
Northern man in the constitutional convention felt the 
living power of slavery in the days of " the fathers?" 

The conduct of our constitutional fathers : what shall 
we think of it? What light does it throw upon the 
debility or the strength — upon the probable disapijear- 
ance or endurance of the institution of slavery in early 
days? Southern men put down their programme bodily 
amongst the provisions of the constitution ; and with a 
power that made Northern men stand amazed at the 
feebleness of their opposition. Surely the practical 
issues of the deliberations of our ancestors should have 
estopped "the fathers" from "expecting that within a 
short period slavery will disappear for ever;" and rather 
forced them to feel that that domestic institution of the 
South, which, at the disadvantage of three to ten, did 
bind hand and foot the strongest men of the nation, had 
more than a few days to live on the earth. 

5. Condition. — Relative state of the two sections, pre- 
sent and prospective.-— BQjon^ all question, at the time 
of the formation of the American Constitution, in all 
the elements of secular prosperitj^, the most flourishing 
section of the country was the South. 

The South was the wealthiest portion of the country ; 
and .the fathers say so. The slaves of Virginia sur- 
passed the entire population of the State of New York 



THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 21 

by 50,000 ; and that of every other one of the Northern 
States, Massachusetts only excepted. 

The exports of Carolina were near 600,000 pounds per 
annum. As to the State of Georgia, Roger Sherman 
concedes that her rapid growth justified the relatively 
larger allotment of representatives accorded to her in 
the first arrangement upon this, subject. Indeed, during 
the entire debate on representation Southern delegates 
claimed the superiority of the South in property, and 
Northern delegates acknowledged it. Gov. Morris 
agreed " that property ought to have its weight, but not 
all the weight. If Southern States are to supply the 
money ^ the Northern States are to spill the blood." 

The peculiar property of the South, we should remem- 
ber, too, was rapidly improving in those days. Oliver 
Elsworth testifies " that slaves multiply so fast in Vir- 
ginia and Maryland that it was cheaper to raise them 
than import them.'' In like manner, the fresh and fertile 
lands of the extreme Southern States presented at this 
period a most inviting field of emigration. Col. Mason, 
a strong anti-slavery man, declared "that the Western 
people are calling out for slaves for their new lands, and 
will soon fill the country witli them." Finally, ponder 
well this fact — labor paid better, and population increased 
faster at the South than at the North, and the fathers say so. 
Madison admitted that the population at the North, at 
that time, surpassed that of the South, but added, "popu- 
lation every day tended towards an equilibrium.^'' He 
continued, " where labor yielded the most, the people 
would resort. Hence it is that people are constantly 
swarming from the Northern and Middle parts of the United 
States to the Southern and Western.^^ Mason corroborates 



22 THE NATIONAL CONTROVEESY. 

Madison, observing that " as soon as the Southern and 
Western population should predominate, which must 
liajppen in a few yearsj^ etc. Gov. Morris testifies to a 
startling prediction of the day. " It has been said that 
North Carolina^ South Carolina^ and Georgia will, in a 
little time, have a majority of the people of America." 
Butler seemed better informed on the subject. He dis- 
claimed the supposition that these three States would 
have more people than all the other States, bat affirmed 
that they would have many more relatively to the North- 
ern States than they now have. For, says he, " t\iQ people 
and strength of America are evidently bearing Southwardly 
and South- Westwardly." So well-founded and accredited 
was this claim of more rapid increase in population at 
the South, that Northern and Southern men were study- 
ing out and making ready for the results. Col. Mason, 
anticipating the early preponderance of the South, was 
anxious to arrange for the periodical taking of the cen- 
sus, lest when the Southern States should come " to have 
three fourths of the population of America within their limits^ 
the Northern will hold fast to the present majority of the 
representatives." Governeur Morris inferred that the 
South must, in this case, "include the great interior country^ 
and everything was to be apprehended from their getting the 
power into their hands'^ Wilson, on the contrary, more 
calm and thoughtful, conceiving that all men, wherever 
placed, have equal rights, and are equally entitled to 
confidence — viewed without apprehension the period 
when a few States should contain the superior number of 
people. 

As for the North — intelligent, brave, enterprising, self- 
reliant, and destined to rise, yet for long yea,rs her busi- 



THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 23 

ness broken up, her ships rotting, her people impove- 
rished — so sad was her condition and her prospects at 
this time, that one of her delegates on the floor of the 
Convention declared that '• the Northern and middle 
States will be ruined^ if not enabled (by a navigation 
law) to defend themselves against foreign regulations." 

Thus, the Southern States were the most wealthy, and 
their property the most improving ; they were spreading 
out their settlements to the West, and their fresh lands 
were calling aloud for emigrants ; labor paid best at the 
South, and the people were swarming from the North to 
secure its profits ; population was increasing faster at the 
South, and all anticipated its early predominance ; 
power and influence were rapidly accumulating at the 
South, and far-seeing men began to apprehend the 
results of its change of hands. 

The condition of the country in early days ! — what 
shall we say of it? One word only. Surely it must 
have struck to death the very first rising of an expecta- 
tion in the mind of any one of " the fathers," that, within 
a short period, slavery will disappear for ever. 

6. The mental condition of the fathers. — It is question- 
able whether the anti-slavery virtue of the fathers was not 
too feeble to admit of any such conscious claims upon the 
South, to sustain any such expectations of the speedy 
abolition of slavery. 

Their ancestors had enacted, and carried out, probably 
the very darkest slave-code recorded in the history of a 
civilized people. Some of the States which the fathers 
represented, justified slave-making by statute. — Ancient 
Charters, Mass. ch. 12. Trumb. Col. Kec. 332. On their 
own soil they practised this slave-making ; and not only 



24: THE NATIONAL CONTROVEIISY. 

divided families, but sent Indian women and boys to the 
West Indies, and sold them for slaves. — Trumb. Conn., 
vol. i. 85. They imported the product of slave-labor, 
distilled the molasses into rum, exported the same to 
Africa, purchased slaves with the proceeds, transported 
them to the West Indies, and sold them in the market. 
— (Yide Archives Conn. Hartford.) By law they author- 
ized every city, town, or manor, to appoint a cominon 
ivhipper^ who should receive a salary, not to exceed 
three shillings per head for every slave whipped ; and 
further authorized any person finding slaves at a certain 
distance from their homes, or out after nine o'clock at 
night — without a written passport — to inflict twenty 
lashes on each, and recover from the master by suit, reason- 
able compensation for his services. — (Laws of Conn., Mass. 
New York, New Jersey, &c.) They not only required 
the fugitive to be surrendered upon claim, and punished 
all who " harbored," " secreted," " entertained," *' aided," 
or " tolerated" the " oppressed," but laid their ven- 
geance on every person who, knowing that a slave is, or 
has been entertained or secreted, does not make it known. 
— Laws Ehode Island, New York, &c. They discour- 
aged emancipation in various forms — in one State inflict- 
ing a fine of $300 a-piece for every slave brought into 
her territory to be freed. — Ehode Island, Mass., Conn. 
These historical facts are not brought up reproachfully, 
but simply as necessary to justice in the premises. 

Such was the early face of slavery in the homes of 
" the fathers ;" and though the system had long since 
been modified by milder legislation, yet unsuitable as 
slave-labor had ever been in northern latitudes, and con- 
sequently unreasonable as was the perpetuation of slavery 



THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 25 

there, except on purely benevolent principles, they 
testify upon the floor of the Convention, that they 
themselves were, in general, slaveholders still — only one 
SUite having emancipated her slaves, and one more 
arranged to follow her example. Nor let it be forgotten, 
that they themselves, at that very time, had just opened 
a national door to the importation of slaves, for the space 
of twenty years. 

That our northern fathers were men of exalted talents, 
patriotism, and worth, it is our pride and our glory to 
concede. That in perfect consistency with all virtue, 
they might have cherished the desire that their southern 
brethren would adopt such a course in the premises as 
they themselves deemed all-important to the welfare of 
the country, we readilj acknowledge. But this point we 
respectfully submit. Is it consistent with the laws of 
a good conscience, with the workings of truth and 
virtue in the human soul, that our northern fathers, and 
those they represented, with such a past history and 
present position in the premises, should expect from 
tlieir southern neighbors, as a species of duty to the 
North, the early abolition of slavery ? Eemember — ^it 
was an institution which the South had never carried to 
the same excess ; an institution which, with so little 
inducement to retain, they themselves had not yet aban- 
doned : nay 1 an institution which they themselves had 
recently and greatly augmented and encouraged. I say 
now — involved in such unhappy complications, would it 
not have been pure phariseeism in our northern fathers to 
entertain any such expectation ? And would not modesty 
and rectitude, on their part, have positively incapacitated 
them to cherish any such sense of southern obligation ? 

2 



26 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

Apart from the words of the Constitution, yon perceive 
tliere was nothing, in the whole conditimi of things, to 
justify, but everything to nullify the alleged expectation 
fxthers. 

6. The great official act of the fathers. — Did not the 
fathers themselves hury deep in the Constitution all north- 
ern right to expect the speedy abolition of slavery by 
the South ? Consider — 

1. The Attitude of the Parties. — The manner in which 
the opposing sections of the country came together to 
form a common government, is vividly exhibited in the 
debates of the convention. They had common ties, 
but conflicting interests. The North expected to live by 
her ships; the South by her slaves. The 'North was 
deeply revolted by the slave-claims of the South ; and 
the Soutli as deeply purposed that their rejection should 
work her exclusion from the union. An agricultural 
people, the South required free-trade^ because it would 
secure low freights. While the North, a commercial 
population, required a navigation act, because a prohibi- 
tion upon foreign bottoms would operate a premium upon 
Northern ships. In a word — if the North and the South 
formed a copartnership, Northern sentiments must con- 
cede to Southern institutions ; and Southern exports 
must be taxed for Northern commerce. Just here it was 
that the North and the South were brought to a dead- 
lock. Just around these conflicting points were laid down 
the foundations of our government. And precisely to 
this conflict and compromise must we ever come back 
for all just interpretation of the Constitution of the coun- 
try. The Eastern states declared through their represen- 
tatives — " we have but one motive to Union — and that is 



THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 27 

commerce f without a navigation act, we "are ruined." 
The Southern states respond — we have no motive to 
Union if slavery is not protected ; and a navigation law 
would destroy its profits. Thus " the two grand divi- 
sions of Northern and Southern interests," as they were 
stjded, stood diametrically opposed to each other, not less 
in the purposes of the parties, than in the nature of things. 
Good reason had Pierce Butler to declare, " the interests 
of the North and the South were as far apart as those of 
Kussia and Turkey." What was to be done ? Consider. 

2. The Compromise Effected. — " Government, to be last- 
ing, must be founded in the confidence and affection of 
the people." The convention felt the necessity of mutual 
accommodation, and appointed a committee of conference 
and compromise comprising one member from each state. 
Specially, the fourth, fifth, and sixth sections of Art. 
Seventh, were referred to them ; and generally in the 
language of Governeur Morris — " the whole suhjed^ of their 
differences. On the side of the South were committed 
the claims of her domestic institution and her opposi- 
tion to commercial restrictions. On the side of the North 
her opposition to the slave-claims of the South, and her 
desire for commercial regulations. 

Governeur Morris stated the object of the committee 
in these words — " that these things (these sectional differ- 
ences) may form a bargain among the Northern and 
Southern states." Madison subsequently alluding to the 
transaction, styled it. "a?2 understanding on the two sub- 
jects of navigation and slavery between the two parts of 
the Union." Concerning the action of the committee, 
Luther Martin, a prominent member, writes thus: "I 
found the Eastern states, notwithstanding tlieir aversion 



28 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

to slavery, willing to indulge the Southern states, &c., 
provided the Southern states would gratify them by lay- 
ing no restriction on navigation acts." Through the 
mercy of God the parties conferred, agreed, and thus 
removed all obstacles to the formation of a National 
Union. When the agreement, in detail, was carried out 
in the stipulations of the Constitution, the South had 
surrendered two things — her claim to indefinite importa- 
tion was restricted to a term of twenty years, and her 
protection against navigation acts was reduced from the 
two-thirds vote recommended by " the Committee of 
Detail" to the vote of a majority. But she secured her 
great desideratum, her slave claims, person and property 
representation, taxation, &c. The North surrendered her 
public opposition to the domestic institution of the South, 
and secured for so doing a limitation of the right of 
importation, and what was of far greater importance to 
her, all necessary commercial advantages. Consider: 

3. The Work Done. — The North surrendered, at once 
and for ever, all political right and philosophical reason 
to expect that the South would speedily abolish or depre- 
ciate her institution of slavery. After such a wheeling to 
the right-about in the new ground assumed, with what 
face could " the fathers" , either require or expect that 
slaver}^ should speedily disappear ? If any power on earth 
could have perpetuated slavery, that very power they 
themselves emphatically employed. If any act of man 
could have destroyed his right to expect the rapid disap- 
pearance of slaverj^, that very act they themselves per- 
formed. Bear in mind, they themselves had just 
entrenched slavery in the Constitution, and built up all 
the bulwarks of the government round about her every 



THE EXPECTATION OF THE FATHERS. 29 

strong point. Say ! If strangers set xq:) slavery, do they 
thereby authorize their own expectation that masters 
would throw it down ? If opponents honored andpresei^ed 
slavery, could they thereby expect its advocates to discoun- 
tenance and destroy it. Aye 1 They had made the Con- 
stitution itself open the door of the whole country to an 
illimitable introduction of slaves for the space of twenty 
years — a period, in the estimation of Mr. Madison, long 
enough to insure all the mischiefs uf interminable impor- 
tation. If Northern men so extensively augmented and 
built up slavery, could they thereby acquire a right to ex- 
pect that Southern men would diminish and abolish it? 

What shall we say now of that historical statement which 
has been so industriously and indignantly bandied about 
amongst the people for years past to the perpetration of 
incalculable injury to the character of the South, and the 
peace of the country ? What shall we think of Senator 
Seward's censorious dictum^ — that — The fathers expected 
that slavery, within a short period, would disappear for 
ever?" We answer : All history and reason pronounce 
it a declaration perfectly preposterous ! Was not slavery 
dying out at the north ? Yes ! But the very power 
which diminished it at the north developed it at the south. 
Did not a great anti-slavery wave flow over the country 
at the close of the revolutionary war? Yes! But it 
was a principle which did not do its work in southern 
men, and could not hold its ground in northern men, and 
seemed to find its principal mission in proclaiming the 
power of that assaulted institution^ before which it broke 
down so emphatically in the debates of the convention. 
Were there no words of predicted relaxations in time to 

* Speeches, passim. 



30 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

come? Yes! a very feeble conjecture of some possible 
depreciation in a mere accident of slavery. But even 
that feeble note was soon drowned by the loud counter- 
protestations of a host of hearts purposed to yield nothing, 
but stand by their institution to the very last. Was 
nothing done towards breaking the power of shivery, and 
arresting its progress in time to come? Yes ! The pro- 
secution of a contingent operation of slavery was reduced 
from an unlimited to a definite period. But slavery 
established all her main positions, and by such an over- 
throw of mighty powers arrayed against her as must have 
charged many an adverse mind with the strongest expec- 
tation of her vigorous future. But were there no signs 
of decay in the declining hope of the master and the 
stagnant condition of the country ? Precisely the 
reverse ! Of all sections of the Union the south was 
then the most flourishing and the most hopeful. 
Besides ! tell me how that heart, whose ancestor 
had oppressed the slave as the southern man never 
did, which, at this very moment, is still holding on to 
the slave after the last good reason in his own mind for 
his detention has departed — which, in opposition to 
southern votes, opened the door for twenty years to an 
African influx, whose multiplied descendants may this 
day make up more than half of the slaves of the nation — 
Tell me, I say, how such a heart can cherish a cotem- 
poraneous claim upon the south to the speedy abandon- 
ment of her institution. But, above all, tell me how 
can that heart which has just now constitutionaUzed 
slavery — has just now thrown around it all the protec- 
tions, and shed upon it all the countenance of the govern- 
ment, and given it all the force and power which mortal 



THE GUARANTEES OF THE SOUTH. 31 

man can convey — tell me, I say, how^ lioio can such a heart 
hold a rational or an honest exjDectation that the southern 
man, through some insinuated pledges to the north, will 
speedily set himself to the work of dismissing slavery 
from the land ! In all the history of the times, in all 
the reason of things, in all the obligations of virtue, 
where can you find one solid inch of ground in the mind 
of the fathers to hold up their alleged " expectation V 
Surely not in the covetous nature of man, not in the 
consistent abolitionism of the expectants, not in the 
concessory pledges of the defendants, not in the practical 
results of the Convention, not in the more flourishinsr 

' CD 

prospects of the southern people, not in the covenant to 
hand up southern slavery to the platform of the consti- 
tution upon the proviso that she will consent to shako 
liands there with northern commerce. 

II. Has the south transgressed her constitutional rela- 
tions to the subject of slavery and encroached upon the 
north ? What were the relations of the south to slavery 
as established by the founders of the government. 

Be it remembered : Not one word of discountenance 
of the essential principles of the institution is recorded in 
the constitution of the country. Not one word of pledge 
has the south, ever uttered, either that she would not 
uphold slavery through all time, or that she would sur- 
render one of its principles, or abandon therefor one of 
the immunities of the government, or that she would 
diminish its force in the future, or consent to its confine- 
ment within specified limits. On the contrary, the deci- 
sive fact is this : barring the limitation of the slave- 
trade, the national compact expressly recognised all the 



82 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

principles, practices, and claims of slavery which were 
represented in the convention by the delegates of the 
planting States. 

Behold the programme bodily imbedded in the heart of 
the constitution. For all time to come, and for all the ter- 
ritory and population of the earth, now belonging to the 
great American Union, or that "may be included" within 
her dominions hereafter, there stands the great constitu- 
tional status of all national enumeration, representation, 
and taxation, there it stands — mark ! embracing the " three- 
fifths of all other persons ! ''^ When these slaves fly from 
the service of the master, while this government exists, 
there stands the constitutional guarantee that on any 
foot of the nation's soil to which he may have escaped, 
on claim of that master, to whom the constitution says 
his services are justly due — the fugitive "shall be de- 
livered up." When these slaves rise in revolt against 
the master, while this government has a name on earth, 
there stands the constitutional guarantee, that Congress 
shall stretch out her strong arm in defence of the master, 
and in suppression of the insurgents. Thus, in the 
very clearest and strongest language, the constitution 
guarantees to the South all maintenance and carrying 
out of the principles and practices of slavery, to which she 
had been accustomed before the formation of the Union. 

The very feeblest statement, therefore, of the true 
slavery position of the South, we take to be this : By 
constitutional enactment, the South is entitled to all such 
tolera7ice and countenance on the subject of slavery., both in 
language and in conduct., as shall afford her a reasonable 
opportunity of securing the profits of the institution., without 
being scandalized for its practice. 



THE GUARANTEES OF THE SOUTH. 83 

We "hold that the provisions of the constitution, fairly 
interpreted, furnish ample proof of this definition. 

The nature of the guarantees supports it. When they 
built up all the bulwarks of the constitution around 
every principle and practice of slavery, what did the 
fathers mean ? Surely to fortify to the South all the 
ordinary customs of slavery, without insult or encroach- 
ment, while the government stands. He who grants a 
privilege conveys all that is necessary to the reasonable 
enjoyment of that which is granted. The North gua- 
rantees Slavery to the South. If now she defames 
Slavery, will not arrest the abstraction of slaves, and 
even obstructs the rendition of slaves, just so far she 
takes back what she had granted, diminishes the benefits 
and comforts of the relation, and breaks her guarantees. 
i\gain, if, on the one hand, the North sincerely deems 
slavery a state of society whose impiety, impolicy, and 
outrage should be publicly exposed on all occasions, then 
she makes herself particeps criminis by her guarantee of 
toleration ; but if, on the other, slavery, under the cir- 
cumstances, might be justifiably tolerated, then she lies 
under every obligation to secure to the slaveholder — 
what constitutional language so obviously implies — a 
comfortable, unobstructed prosecution of his guaranteed 
custom of society. If any man still denies that the 
nature of the guarantees demands a practical and respect- 
ful toleration of the institution, let him compare the 
warring attitudes of the North, first in framing, and then 
in interpreting the constitution. Standing up to forin 
the constitution, the Northern man says to his Southern 
neighbor, " Yes ! we will concede all you require. On 
the one hand, your slaves shall enjoy all the dignities you 

2* 



84 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

would have conferred upon them. Like other men of 
the country, they sliall be counted in the national census, 
constitute subjects of direct taxation, and be represented in 
all the dignities and authorities of the country. Nor, on 
the other hand, will we refuse to exact from them all the 
degradation you yourselves have been pleased to pre- 
scribe. When they come from Africa, as you say, they 
shall be ' articles' — 'taxed,' * dutied,' and 'priced,' like 
all 'other imports.' When they fly from your service, 
cost the nation what it may, from any foot of her soil — 
by her military arm, if necessary — they shall be de- 
livered up to him to whom his service is ' justly' ' due.' 
Should any man dispute your right of service, our 
courts shall stand by the constitution, and pronounce the 
slave the property of his master. And finally, should 
that slave ever venture to rise up against you, the strong 
arm of the nation shall shoot him down at your feet, 
but he shall be subdued to your just dominion. Yes! 
all this will we do. Come, now ! let us shake hands in 
an honorable, fraternal national covenant." The com- 
pact is made. But the moment the Northern man comes 
to officiate as interpreter, his construction destroys his 
contract ! How changed his language and tone ! " Now 
that we have constitutionally anchored you in the Union, 
you must allow us to say, we hate your institution, and 
can never fraternize with you fully until you abandon it. 
We claim unrestrained liberty to denounce and disgrace 
it on every hand ; nor shall we ever cease our obloquy 
and opposition until we degrade and drive it from the 
free soil of our countr3^" Our sketch is boldly drawn, 
we acknowledge ; but we need hardly say, that any such 
construction of our national constitution as warrants 



THE GUARANTEES OF THE SOUTH. 35 

either an abusive or an obstructive intermeddling with the 
subject of slavery, is a palpable destruction of its face 
and force. Clearly, protection of the principles and cus- 
toms of slavery in language obliges to the protection of 
the principles and habits of slavery m practice. Where 
is the consistency of that man who says, " I will solemnly 
authorize you to hold man in slavery, but I will habi- 
tually castigate you for the rascality of the deed. By all 
the power of the nation, judicial and military, I will 
assuredly return to you ^^our flying slave ; but I will 
spit upon the baseness that demands the rendition ?" 
We hold, therefore, that the guarantees of the constitu- 
tion, in themselves considered, demand of the North that 
she secure to the South such a peaceful carrying out of 
her peculiar state of society as shall never be disturbed, 
either by provoking defamation or practical interruption. 
2. The origin of the guarantees fully corroborates 
the definition laid down. At the close of the Eevolu- 
tionary war, whei| the South set out to meet the JSTorth 
to form a national government, she was in a great 
strait. The Nortli would jput down slavery. The South 
must uphold slavery. Her character, peace, honor, 
power, prosperity, business, and home, were all insepa- 
rably identified with her institution. A man had almost 
as well covenant to tear out and surrender a bone of his 
body, or a faculty of his mind, as the South agree to 
surrender or disparage her inherited social organization, 
or constitutionalize such treatment of it by others. She 
travelled to the Convention every way compelled and 
resolved to have the rights of her institution written out 
in full in the Magna Charta of the country, or return to 
her home as independent as she left it. JSTor did the 



36 THE NATIONAL CONTEOVERSY. 

!N'ortli and tlie South confer many days before the !N'orth 
became perfectly convinced, that the South, in position 
could not, and in temper ivould not, yield on the subject 
of slavery. As the only term of union, the South de- 
manded that she should be allowed to transact her own 
affairs in her own way ; and since her ways of slavery 
were not ways of pleasantness to the North, she dis- 
tinctly demanded all constitutional protection in carrying 
out her social views and customs as she had done from 
time immemorial. !Now, let it be remembered, it was in 
consideration of this demand of the South, that the 
I^orth, after mature deliberation, subscribed the slavery 
guarantees of the constitution. Most certainly, then, 
the North intended to give what the South required, as 
the sine qua non of her confederation. These constitu- 
tional guarantees, therefore, which in terms convey 
every right of slavery to parties interested, and which 
in history were subscribed in view of a resolute, inflex- 
ible demand of all reasonable protection, most certainly 
do secure to the South, while the government stands, a 
constitutional right to prosecute her system of domestic 
slavery without defamation^ intermeddling^ or obstruction 
on the part of the North. 

8. The ohjecti of the guarantees confirms our definition 
of the rights of the South. The North and the South 
had set out to form a harmonious national family; to 
construct a peaceful, happy, and prosperous Union of the 
two sections of the country. The object of confedera- 
tion decides the conduct of the parties. Whatever con- 
tributed to accomplish this object was right and cove- 
nanted; whatever exerted an opposite influence was 
wrong and covenanted against. Now these slavery 



THE GUARANTEES OF THE SOUTH. 87 

guarantees were granted expressly to carry out this fra- 
ternal co-existence of the parties. They were delibe- 
rately framed and subscribed to prevent all dissatisfac- 
tion and collision ; and to promote mutual respect and 
friendly co-operation. In view of the special object of 
all the slavery clauses of the Constitution, therefore, 
the South was and is entitled to a peaceful, respectful, 
and profitable prosecution of her inherited social cus- 
toms ; and the Korth was, and is proportionably bound 
to abstain from all such courses of language and conduct 
as were calculated to disturb the peace, destroy the 
respect, or obstruct the profits of her institution. 

We are forced to conclude, therefore, that the language 
of the constitutional guarantees, the demand they were 
framed to meet, and the object for which they were sub- 
scribed, incontestably establish two facts. First. By the 
Constitution of the United States of America, the South 
has secured to her while the government stands, a 
national right to hold slaves, and of course to buy, sell, 
employ, transport, and universally manage them as 
she bad ever been accustomed to do. While, by the 
same Constitution, the North has deliberately surren- 
dered all right, while the government stands, to dis- 
honor, and provoke, or confine the South by any sort of 
intermeddling with her institution. 

Has the South ever stepped beyond this broad, well- 
guarded Constitutional platform of Southern rights? It 
is said that she has. Her attempt to take her slaves into 
the Territories is pronounced an encroachment upon 
Northern rights. But wherein lies the trespass? 

1. Were not the Territories equally won by the 
prowess or purchased by the treasure of the South ? If 



88 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

you deny the Soutliern man's riglit to carry "his slaves 
with him into the Territories, you destroy his ConstitU' 
iional property. For the use of the owner — is the primary 
idea of property, and that use you obstruct. 

2. The explicit language of the Constitutional guaran- 
tees sustains this general view, and settles the question. 
The Constitution has distinctly settled the rule of appor- 
tionment ybr representatives and direct taxes — in two rela- 
tions. First, for the states already included in the 
Union. The Constitutional rule of apportionment for 
these, requires that you add " to the whites," " three-fifths 
of all other persons." Mark ! The act of the Constitu- 
tion is this: in the States — it presupposes the existence 
of slavery, and secures to slavery a share in the privileges 
and burdens of the government. But this is not all. 
The Constitution goes out to every inch of the bounda- 
ries of the present states. It looks over into the Terri- 
tories and upon the people all around. It is familiar 
with the idea of " new States." It expects their annexa- 
tion, and makes a rule of apportionment touching repre- 
sentation, not only for the states now included, but 
also for those states which ** may he included''^ hereafter. 
What is that rule ? The Constitution determines that on 
admission, they, too, shall be allowed, in connexion with 
the whites, a " three-fiftlis representation for all other per- 
sons^'''' i. Q.for their slaves. 

Now, he who says there shall be no more slave states, 
exactly crushes out the Constitution. For the Constitu- 
tion says to adjacent territories, **In the present condi- 
tion of the population of the world, it is quite possible 
that you may have slaves or choose to have them ; should 
it be that you so have or choose, our provision for the 



THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 89 

contingency is this : — when you come into tlie Union, 
your slaves^ like those of the present states, shall have " a 
three fifths''' repy^esentation in the government. Thus, it is 
undeniable, that the great Constitutional rule for the 
apportionment of the privileges and burdens of the 
government, presupposes, we repeat, presupposes^ that 
slavery may inhabit the Territories^ which are to he annexed 
as states. He, therefore, who says " True ! There may 
be slaves in the Territories in fxct, and if not, slaves are 
certainly in the Territories by Constitutional admission; 
but it matters not, you shall not take your slaves there ;" 
palpably, that man sets himself above the Constitution, 
and stamps himself the encroaching party. 

8. The constitutional provision of Art. 1, quoted 
above, in a large sense, nationalizes slavery. The " three- 
fifths representation and taxation of all other persons," 
is not a grant or guarantee limited to the South. It is 
just as applicable to the ISTorth as to the South. Every 
Northern and Middle State in the Union may avail 
itself, this day, of this universal provision of our 
national standard. State sovereignty, it is true, may 
reject slavery at will ; but if slavery does not obtain in 
every State in the Union, it is not because our constitu- 
tion has not laid down a basis for slavery and its claims, 
as large as the country — the whole country over which 
it flings its authority. Where now is the consistency 
of the Northern territorial doctrine? The constitution 
has spread out a foundation for slavery throughout all 
her States, but denied it to all her territories. Why should 
she do this ? If slavery is an evil, why is it not an evil 
in the States ? If slavery may be allowed in the States, 
why not in the territories ? Besides, where the consti- 



40 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

tution makes rules, it makes them for all under its author- 
ity. And where is the first constitutional word excepting 
the territories from the great broad rule of the constitution ? 
4. Wisdom and the wise stand by our interpretation 
of the constitution. James Madison, discoursing upon 
the introduction of new States, remarks : " I am clear and 
firm in opinion that no unfavorable distinctions are admis- 
sible in point of justice and policy," and adds, that ** the 
Western States neither would nor ought to submit to a 
union which degraded them from an equality with other 
States." " The best policy," says Col. Mason, " is to 
treat them with that equality which will make them 
friends and not enemies." Shut out, now, the South 
from the territories. Express to them your operation. 
" You people of the South are not upon an equality with 
us. You mix yourselves up with things which should 
not be admitted in a well-regulated community. We 
cannot allow you to come into the common territory of 
the country with your slaves." Those " unfavorable dis- 
tinctions " which Madison says are inadmissible violations 
both of policy and of justice, and ought not to be submit- 
ted to, observe, if you please, the Northern doctrine does 
not practise upon territories seeking admission into the 
Union, though this were bad enough; but perpetrates 
upon five of the old thirteen States. It puts them in 
Coventry, and says, " stand by, we are holier than yoii." 
How inadmissible, how impracticable are all such invi- 
dious distinctions in a family of free States J Distraction 
unto dissolution, must ever follow degradation from 
political equality. We affirm, therefore, that the neces- 
sary fruits of the Northern territorial doctrine establish 
its heretical parentage. 



THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 41 

5. Consult the contracting mind of the Korth and 
of the South when forming the constitution. The 
Southern men, though slaveholders, respected them- 
selves, and were deeply purposed to be respected by 
others or have no union with them. Suppose our 
Northern doctrine had burst into the mind of the fathers, 
and found nerve enough there to address the Southern 
delegates in the following language. "So long as you 
keep at home with your slaves, we will endure you. 
But in all coming time, when our boundaries shall be 
enlarged, and fresh lands shall throw open their fertile 
bosom to our people and invite their occupancy, and stir 
up a mighty emigrant spirit in the country, upon this 
common soil of the nation, which you have equally con- 
tributed to acquire, we shall never allow you to trespass 
with your miserable institution. Its barbarous cruelties, 
immoralities, and insufferable dishonor, we cannot away 
with ! You may come in person, but you shall never 
enter our national territories with your slaves." Had 
this doctrine been declared on that day, in terms ever so 
decorous and kind, I need say, there never had been our 
United States of America. No ! never! The entire spirit, 
principles, language, and conduct of the Southern dele- 
gates throughout the five months of constitutional dis- 
cussion, emphatically evince this. Let one indication of 
their determined protection of their institution and into- 
lerance of Northern intermeddling suffice. When James 
Madison read his resolution in the convention, proposing 
a method of altering the constitution, and Alexander Ha- 
milton seconded it, Rutledge, of South Carolina, sprang to 
his feet and said : " I never can agree to give a power, by 
which the articles relating to slaves might be altered by 



42 THE NATIONAL CONTKOVERSY. 

the States not interested in that property, but prejudiced 
against it." What an unreasonable resistance! The 
power that made the constitution shall have no power to 
alter it to the damage of slavery ! How firmly and 
fiercely those men stood by their principles! They 
would not trust Southern interests in Northern hands, 
though protected by a national constitution — if that con- 
stitution had not the virtue of the legislation of the 
Medes and Persians. It was indeed a very bold demand. 
But the fathers had passed through too many conflicts. 
Well they knew there could be no union, if they did not 
deal quietly and wisely with the temper and position of 
these men. Mr. Madison, on calling to mind the great 
interest of the South in exports and importation at that 
time, very ingeniously proposed an amendment, yielding 
to the objection for twenty years, by stipulating that the 
fourth and fifth sections of Art. 7, embracing these and 
other points, should not be alterable before 1808, by any 
power. The convention passed the amendment nem. con.j 
and the objector was appeased. 

If any man would learn the genius of the Ame- 
rican constitution, and the character and position of 
its Southern framers, he should never forget one car- 
dinal interpreting fact. The South felt that she had 
no motive for union but generous appreciation of 
Northern fellowship and aid in the Revolutionary 
war. Their interests were all adverse to union, in 
their honest judgment. They must bring their slaves 
with them : it was their life. This, they knew, would 
revolt the North, and work ceaseless chafing. They 
must favor Northern commerce : this, they knew, would 
just so far diminish the profits of slave labor. They 



THE GUARANTEES OF THE SOUTH. 43 

frequently declared to their Northern brethren, ''^inde- 
pendent^ we can now sustain ourselves, united^ we gain 
nothing but risk all." There^ exactly, lay the secret of their 
power. They felt that they did not seek union, and deeply 
determined that they would not peril their vital rights to 
secure it. No man can read the Madison papers and fail 
to be convinced, first, that nothing could have induced 
the Northern delegates to propose the present Northern 
territorial doctrine in the convention ; and second, if 
they had proposed and persistently pressed it, our present 
national government would never have been formed. 

That our national territories are as open to the South 
as to the North is undeniable. Strong popular preju- 
dice, however, disqualifies us to sit in impartial judg- 
ment upon the great modern question — Whether the 
Southern man may not take his slaves with him when 
he seeks a home in the territories of the country ? 
And yet, in defiance of all prejudice, the consider- 
ations advanced, which w^e now repeat, would seem 
to place the matter beyond a question. 1. On the one 
hand every man has a right to carry his property wher- 
ever he takes his person ; on the other, without one syl- 
lable of limitation, the constitution pronounces slaves 
to be property, not only by the force of the plainest 
words, but by the most significant disposition of them. 
2. In the essential structure of its leading principles, the 
constitution presupposes the existence of slaveholding 
territories, and would hardly forbid a slave to go where 
it supposes a slave to he. 3. Having laid a broad basis 
for the claims of slavery throughout all our American 
States, the constitution could hardly have intended to 
deny such a basis to all our American territories. 4. 



44 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

If disparaging distinctions, an American statesman, 
discussing the constitution, pronounces so unjust, un- 
wise, and insufferable, that even Territories should not 
submit to them, he would hardly consider them admis- 
sible amongst confederate States. 5. The sensitive and 
resolute stand of the Southern man to secure all riglits 
and reject all indignities in defence of slavery, could 
hardly have brooked the censorious exclusion of slavery 
from the equal enjoyment of common national property. 
Surely the South would sooner have parted with the 
Union and kept unsullied her honor and her ancient 
institution, than parted with her constitutional rights 
in the territories and her honor, and kept nothing but 
the name of Union and the mockeries of it. 6. Let all 
these considerations be deemed invalid, yet the decision 
of the Supreme Court settles the question. 

ISTational territories are obtained by purchase, gift, 
and arms. That the South paid her part in all territo- 
rial acquisition will not be denied. When the pulse of 
the North beats more generously they will find some 
apology for Southern sensitiveness on this subject by a 
strict comparison of her own gift of square miles to the 
government, and amount of military service winning 
territory, with the territorial donations and blood-shed- 
ding of the South. 

If the South perpetrated no encroachment upon the 
North when she preferred an equal claim to common 
'property., where shall we look for the encroachments of 
the South? Yerily encroachments upon the North 
seem not a little like a myth in the brain of a dema- 
gogue. The vox populi it is which secures his per- 
sonal re-election and the success of his party. These 



THE GUARANTEES OF THE SOUTH. 45 

are all lie lives for. It is his very life therefore to 
know, study, and practise whatever creates a sensation, 
tells npon personal or party issues, gives or breaks a 
blow — in a word carries the people. That the glaring 
antagonism of the North, in the political world, would 
raise the cry of Southern encroachment, was almost as 
certain as that the constitution of things in the material 
world will lift the sun every morning. But why should 
the South encroach upon the North ? What has she 
to gain by the effort ? What has she to encourage the 
attempt ? The public sentiment of the world is agaiixst 
her ! The predominant power of the North is against 
her ! The very constitution of things will fling in her 
face Northern soil. Northern climate, and Northern 
experiment. By past agitation, galled almost beyond 
endurance, what can make her so ready to provoke 
heavier persecutions ? No, indeed ! Take the slavery 
of the South as it w^as when Southern delegates travelled 
North to make a constitution for the country ; take that 
very condition of slavery as it was then and there without 
stint, stereotyped in the constitution, and go now, not to 
politicians, or the press, or the party spirit of the day, 
but in some time of calmness, go down amongst the 
planters of the South, and visit the great body of the 
people at their firesides, and sound them as to their 
views and feelings, and those of their fathers, on all 
this subject, and, my word for it, you will come back 
perfectly convinced that there has scarce been a day 
since Southern men signed the constitution, when the 
great body of the Southern people would not have been 
content in the Union, if the North had but secured to 
the slaveholder that ordinary social respect, and those 



46 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

political and private rights conceded to him in the con- 
stitution. To deny that there have been occasions in 
the historj^ of the country when the South chiiined too 
much, and trespassed upon the rights of the North, is 
to deny their humanity. Justice, however, requires us 
to acknowledge that, in general, such transgressions 
did not find their origin in the spirit and principle of 
the people so much as in the schemes and arts of poli- 
ticians. 

On the whole, let a candid man inform himself in 
the premises, and duly weigh — 1. The peaceful object 
of confederation, and thence Southern right to kind 
treatment; 2. The preliminary requirement of the 
South, involving Southern demand of respectful treat- 
ment ; 3. The constitutional guarantees subscribed to 
meet it, carrying a Northern pledge of courteous treat- 
ment ; 4. The fact that these guarantees are weakened 
by no concessions to Northern fathers — in connexion 
with the further fact of an apparent absence of all 
strong inducements to such trespass ; and he will be 
prepared to believe that the South, in her general 
course of procedure from the days of the Revolution, 
cannot be justly charged with overstepping the consti- 
tutional bounds of slavery to invade the rights of the 
North. 

We submit it now to the fair-minded, honorable man, 
if our Northern fathers never received the shadow of 
a pledge from the South that slavery should be speedily 
abolished, then we, their sons, should not be quick to 
charge her with the spirit of encroachment simply 
because, in our day, Southern men stand strongly upon 
their constitutional guarantees, which they must do to live. 



THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NOKTH. 47 

Let us go farther, and throw out of onr hearts all that 
provocation of temper we, the sons, have suffered our- 
selves both to cherish and to diffuse, by acting upon the 
principle that the South in this day is both retaining 
and enlarging objectionable foundations, which she had 
long since promised to abandon. 

And finally, let us welcome the sentiment, that since 
we have so deeply wronged her conduct in the past, we 
are more bound to right her principles in the future. 

In reference to the argument closed, and that I am 
about to commence, and indeed to all I have said, or 
shall say, I wish to be understood as desiring to do 
ample justice and honor to the principles and motives of 
a great body of my brethren and countrymen, who feel 
that, for many excellent reasons, the system of slavery 
should be discouraged. But the point to which I would 
hold the consciences of these friends is this : — If you can- 
not accomplish your purpose save by countenancing the 
modern system of abuse and hindrance^ is not your con- 
duct immoral f Do you not sanction the palpable 
infraction of a solemn covenant ? 

III. Has not the North violated her constitutional ohliga' 
iions upon this subject^ by encroaching upon the South ? 

What are the constitutional relations of the North to 
the subject of slavery? 

"We have seen that the constitutional convention 
nationalized southern slavery. I know that this is 
offensive language to many persons. I would disturb 
no man ; but truth and justice require a candid exami- 
nation of the position assumed. If the convention did 
not nationalize slavery, how came Governeur Morris to 



48 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

say that " domestic slavery is the most prominent fea- 
ture of the aristocratic countenance of the proposed 
constitution." If not, how came Luther Martin to 
complain, " This system of slavery, which bound hand 
and foot ten states of the Union, and placed them under 
the most abject and servile subjection, was approved by 
a majority of the members of the convention." Let me 
hasten to explain. I do not say that slavery was nation- 
alized in any such sense as to compel any man to become 
or remain, a slaveholder; nor that state sovereignty 
may not admit or exclude it, at pleasure ; nor that every 
man may not entertain any opinion of the institution he 
pleases. But the constitution has nationalized the insti- 
tution of slavery in these two important respects : every 
man in the country, so far as the constitution is con- 
cerned, may hold slaves if he pleases ; and every slave- 
holder has the government of the country both to secure 
and to enforce all its recorded immunities and liabilities. 

In view of this undeniable fact, the constitutional 
relations of the North to the South may be stated thus . 
The North covenanted, by all the sanctions of the con- 
stitution, that they and their posterity, while the govern- 
ment stands, would never harass, dishonor, or obstruct 
the South in the reasonable maintenance and enjoyment 
of that domestic institution which makes up so large a 
part of Southern society. 

This position has been substantially discussed, and we 
trust sustained in view of the language^ the origin^ and 
the object of the constitutional stipulations upon the sub- 
ject. It* corroboration is required, we shall find it by 
changing our line of investigation from generals to par- 
ticulars. The South sought protection. The North con- 



THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE KORTH. 49 

ceded guarantees— guarantees, protection — of what ? 
Clearly of all that needed and sought protection in the 
circumstances. Clearly then the South required, and 
the North granted, protection of those great natural rights 
which the South felt must be greatly exposed by an inti- 
mate union with the North. 

Nations, as well as individuals, have a right of charac- 
ter — a right to be considered to be what they are. By 
nature all mankind feel this right — and the value of it, 
both to their power and their peace. The South did not 
disrespect herself on account of her connexion with 
slavery; yet for this very connexion she knew the 
North would be strongly tempted to depreciate her. 
Whatever, therefore, might be the private opinions of 
her northern neighbors, she demanded of the North a 
demonstration of respect which should protect her cha- 
racter against all such public wholesale defamation as 
would destroy her reputation, peace, self-respect, and 
influence in the Union. It is utterly preposterous to 
imagine for an instant that the South would have 
accepted the northern guarantees, had it been announced 
at the time that they should constitute no protection 
against that flood of vilifying speeches, paragraphs, and 
epithets poured out upon her, through a multitude of 
northern channels, during the last twenty years. 

Every nation, as well as person, is entitled to cmil 
treatment. Self-respect in all humanity feels this right, 
and understands perfectly how much power in the world 
and comfort in life depend upon its preservation. The 
South well knew that her claims to ordinary courtesy 
would be greatly exposed by close confederation witk 
the North. Nor did she consent to the proposed union 

3 



50 THE NATIONAL CONTROVEKSY. 

until sbe considered her claims to common civility pro- 
tected by the articles of the Constitution. How utterly 
preposterous is the thought, that the South, with all her 
quick, high-strung sensibility, would have entered into 
the union, had it been published at the time that the 
provisions of the Constitution were not designed to 
protect her feelings from all the scandal and abuse — all 
the scoffs and taunts which have been so lavishly show- 
ered upon her from the Korth for many long years. 

Every nation, too, has its right of property. This the 
South well knew she must protect, and sought to do so. 
But there had been no union of these States, if the 
South in early days had been thus addressed : — "It 
shall be deemed no impeachment of the constitutional 
integrity of the North, if she stands by for a long 
course of years, and does nothing to arrest the outrage, 
while she is divested of tens of millions of seu^ierja 
moneys by the adverse agency of northern men, private 
and organized, and often published and boasted ; no 
impeachment of her constitutional integrity, though 
there should spring up in the bosom of northern popu- 
lation a wide-spread and violent prejudice against the 
constitutional rendition of the fugitive, and northern 
legislation give it countenance.^ 

Finally, nations have a right of hajjpiness ; and who 
will contend that there has been a faithful protection of 
th'e guaranteed rights of the South on this head, when 
he reflects how deeply her peace has been disturbed by 
unkind, unceasing assaults upon her reputation, her feel- 
ings, her property, and all her foundations of comfort 
and prosperity ? 

Can a reasonable man pretend to deny that the South 



THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 51 

souglit and the ISTortli granted constitutional protection 
of her great natural rights? If the great personal rights 
of the South were not shielded by the guarantees of the 
Constitution, of what use were they ? If they were not 
framed and proffered for this purpose, how came the 
South to accept them ? If, on the contrary, they did 
cover the great natural rights of the South, and were 
framed and offered for this express purpose, then the 
North covenanted, by all the sacred authorities of. the 
Constitution of the country, that they and those who 
should represent them through the following genera- 
tions, while the government stands, would see to it 
that the South should not be harassed, dishonored, 
or obstructed while legitimately sustaining the institu- 
tion of her fathers, but that her valuable rights of 
character, courtesy, property, and happiness, should be 
duly guaranteed under the wing of the Union. Is not 
this argument irrefragably sealed by that great principle 
of interpretation pertinent to all language, and especially 
to that of contracts, viz. — that words are to be inter- 
preted as bearing the sense in which the speaker knows 
that the party addressed understands them. Did not the 
North know that by her constitutional guarantees, the 
South would expect from her an honorable and a peace- 
able union, although she brought her institution of 
slavery with her ? 

An embarrassing question springs up here. The 
North, we contend, is bound to protect the character 
of the South. But the North may sincerely believe 
that there are many serious evils connected with this 
Southern institution. Has she now surrendered all her 
rights of judgment and speech in the premises? 



62 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

Certainly not. Where then shall we draw the line of 
discrimination between the duties and the rights of the 
Northern man under the guarantees of the constitution ? 
On the one hand, we are free to say, that the rights 
of private judgment and free speech are so undeni- 
able and inestimable that, rather than submit to the 
mischiefs of their permanent invasion amongst men, 
far better sacriiice forthwith the noblest nation earth 
ever saw. We hold therefore, if any man conceives 
that slavery is sin against God, or a political mischief, 
or involving personal and social degradation, &c., 
he has a pe^-fect right to entertain such views ; a per- 
fect right to express them to his fellow-men ; a perfect 
right, by all decorous, earnest, and protracted discus- 
sion, to convince him of their truth, and if possible bring 
him to adopt them. Yes, indeed ! A more sacred, 
vital, and inalienable right — human nature never 
received from the hand of God. But on the other 
hand, the moment a Northern man goes beyond fair 
argument and decorous persuasion on the subject of 
slavery, and commences any form of uncourteous 
address, censorious charges, belligerent agitation, or 
irritating conduct, that moment he not only departs 
from the rules of ordinar}^ decorum, but violates the 
great sectional compact, and exerts a power delibe- 
rately surrendered in the constitution. Evidently all 
such conduct has a tendency to irritate and alienate 
Southern men, and thus break the national union. It 
is therefore a style of procedure from which the 
Northern man, by the object of confederation, stands 
pledged to abstain. Evidently all such conduct is a 
departure from that spirit of civility and forbearance, 



THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 53 

on tlie subject of slavery, for which the Southern man 
substantially stipulated, and which the Northern man 
substantially agreed to exercise. It is consequently 
conduct in violation of his solemn covenant in the con- 
stitution. In a word, since the objects of our national 
union never could be accomplished, if one party were 
interminably exposed to the harassing and degrading 
assaults of the other, therefore beyond the civil utterance 
of truth — whatever in feeling, language, or conduct 
brought to bear upon the relation of slavery is calcu- 
lated to inflame the Southern man, and disalfect him 
towards the North, and stir up the Korthern man and 
disaffect him towards the South, is a breach of the gi-eat 
covenant of union. Clearly, therefore, all malignant, 
contemptuous, and hostile feelings ; all wounding, pro- 
voking, and defamatory language ; all depreciating, 
scandalizing, and injurious publications; all speeches 
delivered, parties organized, and papers published pur- 
posely to invalidate, unsettle, and overthrow the South- 
ern institution ; all public and private denials of the con- 
stitutional claims of the South; all political declarations 
that slavery has no reliable guarantees in the constitu- 
tion and must be abolished ; all administration of the 
government w4th a view to undermine and eradicate 
slavery ; all popular prejudice and state legislation that 
obstructs the enforcement of recorded rights; all under- 
handed attempts to disaffect the slave at home, and all 
organizations and efforts public or private to bear the 
fugitive beyond the reach of recovery ; all attempts to 
stir up insurrection by incendiary publications, secret 
coMspiracy, or open invasion — all, all such agencies, 
and all justifications or apologies for the same, are a 



54 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

palpable breach of faith, a provoking denial of the great 
American sectional compact. Who questions the im- 
morality of such conduct ? That it tends to break up 
that harmony of the national family we had engaged to 
promote, all must see. That it works this mischief by 
dishonorable abandonment of constitutional obligations, 
none can doubt. 

Thus that the guarantees obliged the Korth by 
language and conduct to practise all such tolerance on 
the subject of slavery as would tend to secure to the 
South reasonable enjoyment of her natural rights, in 
order to a quiet, honorable, and happy fraternity in the 
Union — is established by the following considerations : 
1. All such toleration was demanded by the South as a 
condition precedent to K confederation, and granted as 
such. 2. All such toleration is so emphatically embraced 
in the provisions of the constitution, that they mean 
nothing without it. 3. All such toleration is indis- 
pensable to the preservation of the union formed. 

If we were allowed to express the compact on the 
part of our Northern fathers we should employ sub- 
stantially such language as the following : " We 
covenant — not that we surrender those opinions on 
the subject of slavery which we brought with us to the 
convention, but that we will practise all respectful 
tolerance of yours : not that we shall adopt your 
customs upon the subject of slavery, but that you shall 
not be molested in the support of them during the 
entire period of our confederation : not that w^e will 
honor or promote your institution, but that beyond the 
language and influence of courteous suasion we will 
not suffer it to be dishonored or opposed in any such 



THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 55 

manner as shall wound, irritate, or alienate your feel- 
ings, or molest and imperil our liappy union. 

If this is the just interpretation of the great laws of 
the constitution on the point of Northern and Southern 
differences, it is no difficult matter to decide which 
party has adhered most closely to its constitutional obli- 
gations on the subject of slavery. 

We do not believe, as we have contended above, that 
the South can be fairly charged with any general spirit 
or habit of disobedience to her constitutional duties. 
But has the North kept her covenant ? Has she main- 
tained her integrity in carrying out her constitutional 
engagements on this unhappy subject ? Has she always 
or prevailingly spoken and acted with such considerate, 
conscientious moderation and forbearance in the pre- 
mises as to give the South no ground of complaint ? 
Has she said and done nothing calculated to disaffect 
Southern men and break up their honorable and happy 
co-operation in the Union? Go and listen to any Re- 
publican speech on the floor of Congress. Go and 
read any issue of the Eepublican press from one end of 
the country to the other. Go and attend any Republi- 
can meetings, and give heed to their words and spirit 
touching slavery and the South. Open your ears to 
the conversations of men on the highways and at their 
firesides. In a w^ord, gather up from every outlet of 
popular temper, from every exhibition of the spirit of 
the people, the beatings of the public heart at the 
North upon the subject of our sectional relations. Far 
be it from any man to charge every utterance of every 
member of the dominant party with intolerant hostility 
to Southern institutions — far be it from us to deny that 



56 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

many an American, while standing in the ranks of those 
who are opposed to the social institutions and political 
claims of the South, has yet manifested a generous and 
higli-souled appreciation of the character, condition, 
and constitutional rights of the Southern section of our 
common country. But who is he, so destitute of intel- 
ligence and candor as to aver that the every-day 
national exhibitions of the mind of the nation bear no 
testimony to him of a wide-spread and bitter anti-sla- 
very spirit, every way well calculated to provoke, dis- 
honor, and disunite the Southern branch of the national 
family ? The truth is, there is no need of specifica- 
tion upon this subject, for it must be obvious to every 
candid mind that by every natural development, the 
North has been making perpetual aggressions upon the 
constitutional rights of the South, and lately with a 
recklessness which seems to have utterly forgotten that 
all this severe anti-slavery tone and movement in our 
day is a palpable infraction of the very compact which 
lies at the foundation of the American Union. 

Let no man suppose that this antagonistic element in 
ISTorthern population is either limited or feeble. Study 
its two great fountains of supply. Self-styled Aboli- 
tionism I Its organizations and its organs may be 
found in almost every portion north of the Potomac, 
and beyond a question have been steadily augmenting 
in number and power for the quarter of a century. 
In 184:0, Abolitionism changed its field — the Church for 
the State — and set up 2i])olitical in the place oi -a. religious 
operation. The American Anti-slavery Society was 
divided at that time. Those who retained the name — 
from centres of influence, such as Boston, New York, 



THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 57 

Pennsylvania, and Ohio, instead of struggling to intro- 
duce the community into their organizations, rather 
labored to impress themselves upon the community, 
emplo^ang for this purpose journals, agents, advocates, 
conventions, lectures, tracts, &c. The measure of the 
power and growth of Abolitionists, therefore, is to be 
learned rather from the growth and power of their 
principles in the community at large, than from any 
appreciable catalogue of the body. 

Judge its progress from its impression upon the 
political world. That portion which seceded from the 
parent society in 1840, threw themselves fully upon 
the political arena, and started the so-called Liberty 
Party. In 1840, they voted 7,000 ; in 1844, 64,000 ; 
in 1848, about 100,000 ; in 1852, 150,000 ; and in 1860 
elected Lincoln. 

Judge its progress by its impression upon the reli- 
gious world. The American Missionary Association 
seceded from the American Foreign and Home Mis- 
sionary Society, some fifteen years ago, because of their 
silence upon the subject of slavery, and are supposed 
in general to be immediate emancipationists. They 
made their first report in 1847. They had received 
but a small sum, and assisted but four Home Mission- 
aries. In 1852, they raised $30,000, and aided about 
sixty Missionaries. In 1854, they collected $50,000, 
and assisted near one hundred Missionaries. In 1860, 
they report $64,000, and near one hundred and fifty 
Missionaries. 

'Tis true you cannot measure Abolitionism accurately 
by any or all of these standards ; yet Abolitionism lies 
at the foundation, and has been the moving power in 

3* 



58 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

these and otlier growing bodies, political and religious ; 
and it is fair to infer from their steady, rapid growtli in 
nunibers and power, the steady growth of the Abolition 
principle during the last tw^enty years. 

As to the temper of these fellow-citizens, with what 
a demoniacal hate do they curse the Constitution and 
its guarantees, and practically expel Southern men from 
all possible affiliation with themselves ! What a divi- 
sive virus do they perpetually and resolutely radiate 
through all the population of this latitude ! The second 
fountain-head is strong anti-slavery or ranh Re/puUican- 
ism. Its advocates strenuously disclaim the designa- 
tion of Abolitionists^ but seldom fail to prove their 
consanguinity by answering w^hen Abolitionists are 
called, and defending when Abolitionists are assailed. 
This class of Northern population is far more nume- 
rous and influential. It must be admitted, too, that 
like the Abolitionists, they do breathe out a public and 
virulent hostility to slavery, by all their doctrines, 
deliverances, and measures, which practically expels 
the Southern man, if not from all possible, yet from all 
comfortable political fellowship. Through all their 
well-arranged and efficient organizations, journals, and 
public and personal habits, as from a mighty magazine, 
what a countless multitude and diversity of hostile 
missiles are constantly showered upon the South ! The 
circulation of the most powerful and mischievous ^<?Z^7^- 
cal anti-slavery journal amounts to something like one 
hundred thousand daily and two hundred thousand 
weekly copies. If each paper goes to a family, and 
each family consists of five persons, then this sheet, too 
often spiced with a rich assortment of anti-Southern 



THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 59 

arguments and flings, to a greater or less extent reaches 
more than a million of Northern minds every week. 
The most powerful and mischievous religious anti- 
slavery journal has a subscription of near seventy 
thousand — a circulation far outstripping that of any 
religious paper of milder sentiments in the country — 
and of late more rapidly increasing than ever. If these 
two stand at the head of the catalogue, what a multi- 
tude of subordinate journals are perpetually running 
through all parts of the North, publishing evil tidings 
of the South ! Oh, let all our countrymen dwelling 
this side the Potomac, ponder this fact. The North has 
an appetite that demands, devours, and digests this 
perpetual and prodigious flood of the very bitterest 
anti-Southern aliment. Tell me, now, which party is 
it that encroaches upon the other? Where are all the 
solemn constitutional guarantees of the Southern insti- 
tution ? How can the Nortli fulfil her covenant to 
embrace the South in honorable union, while vigorously 
training herself to kick the South out of all endurance? 
The growing power of anti-slavery sentiment is fur- 
ther manifested in its numerous secessions, in late years, 
from the old foundations of Christian union. Time 
was when Presbyterians and Congregationalists, as a 
band of brethren, conducted all their missionary opera- 
tions in concert. But Anti-slavery forced oflf a strong 
minority, who, for several years, have managed Home 
and Foreign Missions upon their own principles. Until 
recently, the same brethren could toil side by side in 
the Tract cause ; but here, too. Anti-slavery has split 
the body, and thrown a gulph between the parts. 
Once Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, aild New- 



QO THE NATIONAL CONTROVEKSY. 

School Presbyterians, could all march together under 
their respective denominational banners ; but in late 
years Anti-slavery has ruptured them all. Christian 
union \9> jpowerful union : and that agent that can step 
through the land and sunder all sorts of the most 
venerable Christian fiimilies, cannot be feeble. It 
should certainly enhance our conviction of the power 
of extreme anti-slavery principles at the North, that 
the sacred pulpit^ and exalted political statesmanships 
the two strongest citadels of political rectitude, the two 
last bulwarks against national dissolution, have long 
been giving icay before the resistless energy of this 
desolating fanaticism. Alas ! the pulpit ! Would 
you form some conception of the divisive poison 
which it has spread through the land, reflect how 
many of its commissioned occupants have already 
reached the bitterest extremity of intolerance, and 
have revealed the fact by avowing their determined 
purpose to part with the Bihle sooner than obey the 
constitution, and affiliate with the South. AVhen the 
appointed expounders of the 'hook of the churchy in such 
numbers are content to lead the van in this crusade 
against the South — the country's last hope for the pre- 
servation of political fraternity must rest upon eminent 
statesmen of every party stripe. These are the men to 
whom in times of trouble the country must ever look 
for sound expositions of the hook of the state ; the men 
Avhom she expects to come to her help, and make a 
stand against the profane violation of that early sec- 
tional covenant which composes the corner-stone of the 
government. But here, too, the patriot's last hope has 
failed liirp. Those fundamental guarantees, upon 






THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 61 

which, in an eventful hour, our venerable ancestors 
built the constitution of the country, and the Union of 
the States — where, oh, where are they now ? If our 
constitutional fathers could arise from their graves 
and look over the history of their beloved country for 
the last twenty years, what grief would bow them 
down as tliey surveyed the progress of the irrepressible 
conflict; the manifold encroachments of the North 
upon the constitutional prerogatives of the South ! 
But wliat amazement and horror would seize them as 
they pondered the responses returned by the President 
Meet and his Pre'inier^ the acknowledged leaders of the 
dominant party, to their own anxious interrogatories 
concerning the present fearful condition of the 
countr3^ Our fathers well knew that they had secured 
to the South, indisputably, the peaceful enjoyment of 
their Southern institution by all the sanctities of the 
constitution they had framed. Yet, wdien they inquire 
of the now head-men of the nation, — " What is the 
object of your party ?" The answer is : " The party of 
freedom seek complete and universal emancipation." 
(Seward's Cleaveland Speech.) The fathers well knew 
their constitutional decree in the event of an escape — 
that the combined power of the nation should rise up 
and remand the bond-man to the control of his master, 
and tJiis^ that the rights of the slaveholder, by Northern 
compact, to the unobstructed service of his every slave 
might be untouched before the eyes of the world. Yet, 
when our fathers inquire further : "What is the work 
of your party ?" The i-esponse comes back — " Slavery 
call he^ audit must he aholished^ and you and I must 
do ity {Ibid.) Finally, when the fathers inquire — 



62 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

" What are the plans of yonr party ?" The answer 
returns in the triumphant shout of the leader to his par- 
tisans : By these measures you '' shall sooii hriny the 
jparties of the country into an effective aggression upon 
slavery. If this is too sIovj — then go faster if you can^ 
and I will go with youy^' {Ihid.) But we will not 
enlarge, nor need we do so. Call to mind that early 
day when Southern men, under the shelter of the con- 
stitution, travelled constantly through the country with 
their family and servants, and were welcomed by all 
the North, save, perhaps, here and there a solitary 
Quaker, and compare it with the present condition of 
Northern society — and who so ignorant or uncandid 
as to deny that while the South, in general, has main- 
tained her fidelity to her sectional stipulations in the 
constitution, there has sprung up in late years a power- 
ful adverse sentiment at the North, which, powerfully 
organized, perpetually and provokingly encroaches 
upon rights which the constitution secures, and under- 
mines an institution which the constitution over- 
shadows. 

Let it not be said that your condemnations are too 
sweeping. You breathe an unkind, a reproving spirit 
upon the whole North. He that does this is a great 
transgressor. Thank God ! A yqyj large body of the 
people would this day do justice to the South, if her 
rights in the constitution were brought fairly and fully 
before them. Besides the very many who have ever 

* We are very happy to observe Mr. Seward's recent indisposition to 
carry out his extreme views. The unhappy condition of things in the 
country, in part, is surely the legitimate result of his earlier doctrines. 
May his future conservatism counteract the radicalism of the past. 



THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 63 

stood up nobly in her defence, not a few of those who 
are numbered amongst opponents to her policy are yet 
very far from being oppressors of her principles. God 
grant that all tJie large remains of mutual respect and 
kindness, North and South, may be preserved and 
developed. God grant that a kind heart and a good 
spirit may spring up, and be cherished here and there, 
and the country and the world be summoned to praise 
that most benign interposition of God, which shall heal 
our breaches, and reunite our w^arring sections by a 
warmer, closer, firmer bond than made us one people 
in the past. But if these earnest longings of many 
hearts are ever realized, we must fix our eyes upon one 
fact. We must assure ourselves that there is an adverse 
spirit in the land ; that this fierce spirit it is which has 
principally wrouglit our disorganization ; and that obli- 
gation is upon us, and we must bestir ourselves to win 
it to our views, if we can, or overturn its strongholds, 
if we must. 

Let it not be said that the South would rob men of 
the rights of private judgment and free speech. Slay 
we not retort the charge, and say. It is not the South, 
but the North herself, who imposed the prohibition. 
A man may do what he will with his own. It was the 
North that deliberately covenanted, for consideration 
received, that she would never make such use of her 
personal rights as must damage the interests and dis- 
turb the peace of her neighbors. 

Let it not be said that the South demands impracti- 
cabilities of the Nortli. For how is it possible that a 
great, intelligent, intrepid, and free people, in this free 
age, when national shackles are- falling off in every 



64 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

land, should be gagged, and forbidden to express their 
abhorrence of a barbarous relic, which in the heart of 
the freest nation under heaven, is bolstered up to frown 
upon all the liberties of the earth ? Maj we not 
retort the charge, and say. The responsibility of pro- 
viding the Southern man a peaceful, honorable partici- 
pation in the Union — remember, slavery to the contrary 
notwithstanding — tlie Xorth herself, with her eyes 
open, deliberately assumed. If now she provokes, 
disaffects, and alienates Southern men, or allows it to 
be done, her contract is broken, and she alone is 
responsible. 

Let it not be said, " But we insist upon it, you 
expect an impossible performance at our hand. "Who 
can put a bit upon the mouth of man in this free 
country? In the United States of America, who can 
rule down the very sheets of liberty — the daily jour- 
nals of the country — to a definite tone of respect and 
courtesy, upon the most exciting, irritating subject 
under- heaven ? The winds and the rains that purge 
the'heavens and fertilize the earth can be chained up 
to 710 such precision as shall covenant against occasional 
storms and floods ; so the spirit of liberty cannot be 
ruled down to an inviolable tenor of decorous phrase, 
especially when discussing the most flagrant outrages 
of freedom itself. My friend, you deceive yourself. 
The only inability in the case lies in the lack of a heart 
true to covenant. Public sentiment is the dominant 
power among a free people. Let the ]N"orth stand up 
honestly to her constitutional covenant ; let one neigh- 
bor, under a sense of its obligation, check the violence 
of another ; let the man who has been compelled to 



THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NORTH. 65 

read in his daily, a week's unbridled vituperation of 
tlie South, say to the editor — Sir, we are under a solemn 
covenant of toleration on this subject, and if you do 
not stop your abuse of our countrymen, I shall stop my 
paper. Let him who hears a bitter tirade from a poli- 
tician, accustomed to pay such compliments to Southern 
institutions, hear it said on every hand — ^The man who 
has no better sense of national obligation than this, 
cannot represent me in the councils of the nation. In 
a w^ord, just cherish a heart which feels, that when our 
fathers, for benefits received, shook hands with the 
South, and pledged a courteous treatment of her pecu- 
liar institution, they enforced upon their posterity 
a solid obligation, which dies with the government, 
and not before. Yes ! only let the North stand honestly 
to her contract, and our sectional controversy instantly 
comes to an end. 

But when it becomes something like the settled state 
of society at the North — that the tongue in private and 
in public is frequently heard in violent denunciation of 
the South — that the press daily issues paragraphs and 
columns of the bitterest scorn and contempt of the South 
— that more than a million of money, largely through the 
decoying encouragements of the North, is annually 
abstracted from the South — that regions of country rise 
up in violent opposition to the constitutional rendition 
of fugitives from the South — that a dozen states pass 
laws palpably tributary to this faithless prejudice against 
the South — that incendiary hand-bills are freely scat- 
tered over the plantations of the South — that secret 
conspirators here and there are ever planning and work- 
ing to stir up insurrections in the South ; and finally, 



66 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

when it has come to pass that there can be found men 
who will both execute and defend raids upon the South 
— I say now — If you have a heart so perfectly swept of 
all sense of obligation in the premises, that to all this 
you naturally respond — " Oh, you cannot chain free 
speech ; you cannot fetter the liberty of the press ; you 
cannot guard against every violent act of bad men ; 
you cannot arrest the waves of popular prejudice in a 
free-thinking, independent community ; you cannot pre- 
vent legislation itself from taking an occasional step 
beyond the bounds of exact prudence and rectitude ; and 
if there are vile men at the North, where do you find 
the community exempt from such an element of popula- 
tion ? " — then I beg leave to put this appeal, solemnly, to 
my Northern friends : On this point of constitutional 
obligation to the South, is there not an universal demo- 
ralization of Northern society ? And is not the solemn 
covenant of our fathers abandoned ? Yes, my Northern 
brother ! and it should thrill your conscience to reflect 
that the Southern man has never uttered the very first 
word — never entertained the very first thought of divest- 
ing you of that which he placed in your hand, when, for 
the same, you covenanted so solemnly to treat his insti- 
tution with toleration and civility. Oh, yes ! it should 
start up your slumbering conscience, to think that if 
Southern men were, to-day, to inaugurate the very 
slightest movement designed to throw you back for 
your present commercial privileges, upon the status quo 
before the national compact, and insist that from this 
day nothing short of a two-thirds vote in Congress should 
sustain any one regulation of commerce in the country 
— you know, my Northern fi^iend, you know that you 



THE OBLIGATIO^vTS OF THE NOETH. 67 

would turn the world upside down to crush to instant 
death the faithless outrage. Bat lo ! when, bereft for 
twenty years of your own equally clear constitutional 
guarantee to him, the Southern man comes to you to-day 
and claims his rights once more, what is your reply ? 
You send him away, substantially, under the accustomed 
treatment of long years — " I am not sensible of any prac- 
tical obligation in the premises!''^ Oh, should it surprise 
you that the South is out of heart, and dead to all hope 
of justice from the North ? Candidly — is not the seces- 
sion of the South chargeable to the unfaithfulness of the 
North ? 

Finally. Let it not be said, " But you reflect not that 
we, of this nineteenth century, have emerged from the 
darkness of other days ; that a great new light has been 
shed upon us ; that we see, as with a beam from Heaven, 
that slavery is an unrighteous, odious^ nefarious crime, 
and feel as though we had heard a voice from God, 
charging us to discountenance, denounce, and destroy 
the accursed thing. Under these new lights, and heaven- 
prompted ' cognitions,' how can we sit still and connive 
at this outrageous inhumanity?" But stay, friend! 
That light is very questionable which conducts you to a 
breach of faith ! That progress is more than doubtful, 
which brings you to falsify your word, and nullify a 
sacred covenant ! You must permit me yet once more 
to call you back to the recollection of early days. When 
your fathers and my fathers assembled to build a nation, 
your fathers entertained just such sentiments of slavery 
as you now express. They indulged just such feelings, 
employed just such words, and evinced a disposition to 
do just what you have done in the past, and propose to 



QS THE NATIONAL CONTKOYERSY. 

do in the future. But my fathers calmly and firmly 
replied, that they entertained no such sentiments of the 
institution themselves, and would be associated with no 
men who proposed to act upon them. Your fathers 
were reduced to a dilemma. They longed for the union 
of the South. They wanted her help in their commerce. 
A question sprang up in the bosom of your fathers : 
"Although, in our judgment, slavery, in the abstract, is 
such an evil, and should be treated with such decided 
and public discountenance, yet circumstances alter cases. 
To obtain all the advantages of union to fraternity, 
morality, Christianity, and universal national prosperity, 
may we not virtuously covenant, that from this time we 
will withhold all depreciating, provoking treatment of 
the subject ; that we will moreover pledge ourselves to 
our Southern brethen to manifest all such toleration of 
the practice as will enable and incline them to live in the 
spirit and habits of hearty peace and friendship with 
us ? " They conferred, and decided this question — 
affirmatively. And now slavery from the South, and 
commerce from the North, were committed^ with a view 
to see whether there could not be framed such "a bar- 
gain " in the premises as would satisfy both parties, and 
secure a sincere national union. " The bargain " — never 
forget this — the Northern fathers themselves called it by 
that name — " the bargain," the bargain was made. 
The South gave her part — commercial regulations. The 
North gave hers — an agreement^ from that time forth, to 
give to slavery such practical toleration as would be 
acceptable to a Southern man. Hear me now ! My 
Northern friend, your right to abuse slavery perished 
then and there. Your fathers — for you — " bargained " it 



THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE NOETH. 69 

away. It was surrendered in the constitution. Its 
grave lies buried deep amongst the foundations of the gov- 
ernment. You may go and read its epitaph to-day, and 
every day, in the capitals of our Magna Gharta ! ! 

This whole controversy between the North and the 
South, we apprehend, may be shut up within a very 
narrow compass. Either slavery is such an institution 
as may be virtuously tolerated in its American circum- 
stances, or it is not. If slavery may be justifiably tole- 
rated, then the covenant of the constitution binds you, 
and you must cease your encroachments upon its gua- 
rantees, or be a guilty man. If you feel that you can- 
not consent to throw down the weapons of your abusive 
warfare upon the institution, then in conscience and in 
honor one only course is yours. Come squarely up to 
the Southern man and say to him, " My fathers made 
a covenant for me which I cannot carry out. Yon must 
reconstruct the government to meet my scruples^ or I 
must heg leave to give up my jpart in it., and retire from 
the Union!''' This is tire one only honest course for a 
Northern man. To remain in the Union and abuse 
slavery and slaveholders as you do, is to avail yourself 
of the commercial privileges of the government and 
pay nothing for them. It is to withdraw your capital 
from the firm, but insist upon your share of the profits. 
It is to take the specified government protection for 
your own rights, but deny me the specified government 
protection for m^ine. Settle this question. Is a man 
hound hy his word f Are covenants tohehieptf And 
when you do this, you settle our national controversy. 
But national hope begins to sink just here — the violent 
anti-slavery man never studies his 2>osition. He plants 



70 THE NATIONAL CONTKOVERSY. 

the-soles of his feet upon the most sacred right ever 
sealed between man and man, and draws his sword 
upon the proprietor. What a pulpit this from which 
to preach " The encroachments of the South ! " " The 
wrongs of the Korth ! " This man never goes hy the 
reins^ never feels his check I If he must curse slavery, 
let him wheel to the right-about and go N"orth, and 
begin with his fathers for making such a constitution. 
In rectitude, surely he cannot take a single step to 
the South. Bitted, and curbed, and reined up, held 
back by the strong arm of the government, if he 
does go Souths it is a runaway from beginning to 
end. My friend, regidarly dissolve your contract 
or go hy it. Never open your mouth to blame 
another, if you have to break a covenant by breaking 
silence. 

In this hour of the nation's darkness, let us look to 
God. He brings day out of night, and he can cause 
love and justice to spring up out of all this wrangling 
and wrong. Yes! He who combines the incom- 
patibilities of day and night, to heave out all blessing 
upon tlie world, can make JS'orth and South kindly 
work together, to accomplish all those grand re- 
sults to liberty and religion, which we had so long 
trusted was the glorious mission of our common 
country. 

TV. Where shall we find the Origin and the Healing 
of this unhappy Strife f 

No man comprehends the sources of our national con- 
troversy, who does not include the different origin, 
history, character, avocation, and interest of the con- 



THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 71 

tending sections. Kor is he any better informed, I 
apprehend, who does not set down the praGtical substi- 
tution of Deism for Christianity^ or ratlier deistical 
and fanatical anti-slamry^ as the grand exciting cause, 
the present efficient agent of the strife. Let no one 
understand me to say that the anti-slavery man is a 
deist, or a sinner, or a disunionist. On the contrary, I 
need not affirm, that the anti-slavery brother may be in 
general as orthodox as scripture itself; as holy as man 
ever is this side heaven ; and as full of love, peace, or 
union, as mortal man can be. That there is nothing 
necessarily divisive in simple disapprobation of slavery, 
is established by one august historical fact. Anti- 
slavery views were spread out in strongest exhibition 
before our jNorthern and Southern fathers in the con- 
vention, and yet they shook hands over the subject, 
and forined the Union. But that there are influences, 
which, imbibed by anti-slavery sentiment, do impart 
to it a fearful capacity to reduce all social organizations 
to their elements, the whole history of North American 
society for the last quarter of a century, abundantly 
proclaims. Observation sustains analysis, and proves 
that deism s^ndi fanaticism incorporated with opposition 
to slavery, compose a sentiment which depreciates 
moral principle, and thus cuts the chord of moral union 
in the heart of the abolitionist ; unhesitatingly tramples 
under foot all rights and interests that cross its path, 
and thus cuts the social chord of union in the breast 
of the so-called pro-slavery man ; and by its fierceness 
and bitterness chafes to ultimate rupture and incapacity 
of toleration every remaining hond of fraternity. Should 
the reader require clearer proof of the proposition, he 



72 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

will find an attempt to advance it in the Appendix. 
Be the suggested canses of our national disagreement 
ever so just or faulty, there is another question of far 
greater importance. How may this national strife be 
appeased ? How may mischiefs afflicting or impending 
be averted ? 

A very feeble hope of thorough deliverance, I appre- 
hend, is to be derived from conciliation or compromise, 
from secessions or force-bills, from peace congresses or 
national conventions ; even from acts of Congress, or 
amendments of the constitution. None of these con- 
trivances seem to reach the foundation of our troubles, 
which I take to be providential displeasure on account 
of the general religious dereliction of the people : nor to 
touch the method of their action, which I suppose to 
be the radical diversity of sentiment between the con- 
tending sections. Where then shall we go to find true 
deliverance from the surrounding, overshadowing cala- 
mities of the country ? 

The great God of man has given him a great rule to 
go by, especially under all the anxieties and perils of 
life. At such a time as this, when earth ofifers no solid 
ground of hope, let us look up and encourage ourselves 
in the Lord. Let us go to Him for counsel. Oh, let us 
lay our blessed Christianity alongside the great wounds 
of the nation, and we shall soon learn that our religion 
is the great Healer of the earth — national as well as 
individual. 

1. Christianity will correct the temper of the North 
concerning the institution of the South. 

I am aware that many persons apologize for their anti- 
slaver}' zeal on this principle — they feel responsible for 



THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 73 

Southern slaveiy, because, as i\iQ peoijle in mass made the 
Government of the United States, therefore, every man 
is directly accountable for all that the government coun- 
tenances. The political theory is this : just as the people 
of a territory or a state make a territorial or a state 
government — so the people embraced by the old confede- 
ration in the aggregate, made the constitution of the 
United States. So says the constitution itself. " We, 
the people of the United States, do ordain and establish," 
&c. This, 1 apprehend, is a mistake. The true doctrine 
may be stated thus : The subscribing states as such, and 
not the people in mass, made the constitution. 'Tis true 
that they did this, not second-hand, as they had been 
accustomed to act, through their legislatures, or by depu- 
ties, but primarily by their people. That the states 
separately, and not the people collectively, made our 
government, is proved. Visibly : If the people in mass 
made the government, all prior political organizations 
must have been thrown down, in order that the people 
might have their self-governing power uncommitted and 
free for exercise. But see ! Here are thirteen organized 
states. Whence came they ? The constitution did not 
make them. Account for their existence after the forma 
tion of the general government, if you can, except upon 
the principle that they made it. Historically : We know 
by the record, that the states respectively appointed 
delegates to draw up a constitution, and then that the 
states respectively ratified the constitution presented. 
Theoretically : " All powers not delegated to the United 
States by the constitution are reserved to the states 
respectively or to the people." The import of this sec- 
tion is made perspicuous by the action of the several 

4 



74 THE :n'ational controversy. 

states assembled in convention to ratify the constitution. 
Massachusetts declared, of all powers not expressly 
granted, " that they are retained to the several states to he 
hy them exercised^ Precise!}^, this is the declaration of 
New Hampshire. South Carolina resolves that " every 
power, not relinquished hy the states and vested in the gene- 
ral government of the union J'' the states do retain. Yir- 
ginia claims " that each state in the union shall respectively 
retain any power not delegated" by the same, &c., &c. 
Thus the power that made the United States government 
came out of the states respective!}^, and of course was not 
exercised by the people collectively. Literally : Surely 
the delegates of the convention that framed the constitu- 
tion, of all men, should know who its authors are. When 
they acted in the formation of the constitution they 
expressed their action precisely in these words — Not 
" We, the people of the United States," — but " we, the 
people of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, 
Khode Island, Connecticut, New York, &;c., &;c., do 
ordain, declare, and establish the following constitution." 
When this resolution was passed, like every other act of 
the convention, it was placed in the hands of " The Com- 
mittee of Style and Language^^ not to alter but to express 
the act. For brevity and euphony, instead of recording 
it in the language brought in — " We, the people of" — 
thirteen long^ rough^ proper names, they simply general- 
ized what before had been specified, and said — " We, the 
people of the United States," &c., in view of the resolu- 
tion passed, — " We, the people of the suhscrihing states 
(in union), do ordain and establish this constitution." 
Authoritatively : The Federalist tells us what every intelli- 
gent patriot knows, that our United States government is 



THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 75 

partly federal^ partly ludional., and partly mixed^ both 
federal and national. In relation to this express point, 
" the foundation on which the government is huilt^^'' James 
Madison thus expresses himself: "On one hand, the 
constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratifica- 
tion of the people of America, given by deputies elected 
for the special purpose ; but on the other, this assent and 
ratification is to be given by the ^qo\)\q^ not as individuals 
composing one entire nation^ hut as coriiposing the distinct 
and independent states to ivhich they respectively belong. It 
is to be the assent and ratification of the several states 
derived from the superior authority in each state — the 
authority of the people themselves. The act therefore of 
establishing the government toill NOT be a NATIONAL, but a 
FEDERAL ACT." (Fed. p. 213.) ISTow if this be true, and 
if our Southern fathers never surrendered in the consti- 
tution the control of their domestic customs upon the 
subject of slavery, then the responsibility of a Northern 
man founded upon his power to control or touch the 
subject of slavery, is exactly as great and no greater than 
his responsibility and his power touching an alleged 
immorality in the British government. Most especially 
has he no right or power of interference, since the con- 
stitution itself places the whole subject beyond his reach. 
He may fight against the constitution on account of its 
slavery guarantees if he pleases, but never, never against 
slavery under the constitution. 

It is a melancholy fact, which candor must concede, 
that so fiir from according to the South its double inde- 
pendence upon this subject, both original and constitu- 
tional, to an unhappy extent, the anti-slavery assaults of 
the North have been so persistent, belligerent, and abu- 



76 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

sive, tbat tbej virtually deny to the South her rights 
of private judgment, independent agency, self-respect, 
domestic privacy, personal peace, private property, and 
covenanted toleration. 

Breathe now the spirit of Christianity into the heart 
of the North and South upon this subject, and what is 
the issue? All indecorous excess at the North will be 
instantly restrained ; all personal rights at the South will 
be instantly restored ; and the North and the South — 
slavery to the contrary notwithstanding — will entertain 
feelings of mutual respect and kindness, and preserve all 
desirable mutual influence. Oh, what a seasonable, 
refreshing boon ! The restoration of a becoming national 
temper upon this irritating subject! 

2. Christianity will correct the judgment of the North 
concerning the institution of the South. 

The rnan of color, like every other man, has two great 
interests. The one temporal, call it liberty ; the other 
spiritual, the scriptures call it salvation. Especially in 
his present state of unpreparedness for freedom, in rela- 
tive importance the former is as nothing compared w^itli 
the latter. But the practical judgment of the North, so 
far as the influence of deistical anti-slavery extends, has 
precisely reversed this order, and thereby largely 
wrought all the convulsions of the country, ^he social 
and religious irnprovernent of the man of colo7\ his 
all-in-all^ awakens comparatively no interest, is prac- 
tically reckoned of no importance in the Northern 
mind, while his personal freedom, which it were mur- 
der to put into his hands to-day, the man of color must 
have, though it cost the instant overthrow of universal 
social order. What an unbalanced intellect ! What a 



THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 77 

perverted judgment ! You meet a raan upon the streets. 
He lias two I'igbts : a right to draw a breath, and a 
right to take a step. You can destroy either of these 
rights of his at pleasure. You can put a bullet through 
his heart and overthrow^ one, and jostle his person and 
overthrow the other. What madmen would the passers- 
by be deemed if they exerted all power to prevent your 
execution of the latter, but none to prevent your exe- 
cution of the former ! Touching the slave's right to 
take the step of temporal freedom, and to draw the 
breath of life eternal, anti-slavery has judged and acted 
very much as in the case supposed. 

But now let our noble Christianity take the case in 
hand, and w^hat a wholesome balance she instantly 
restores ! Without depreciating one w^hit man's right 
of liberty, or any other natural right of man, Christian- 
ity looks at the case as it is. It sees that these parties 
possess no present qualifications for freedom ; that the 
masters have no present right to decree their freedom, 
but stand under prior obligations to train them for ulti- 
mate enjoyment of all liuman rights. What then is the 
judgment of Christianity in the premises? That the 
liberty of the slave is so important, you may disturb 
the foundations of society to secure it for him ! Far 
from it. Christianity rather decides, that for the pre- 
sent, J?/'6)^re,s^^'y€ somal and religious imrprovement of 
the slave is his supreme good. He therefore who 
would befriend the slave should cherish a wholesome, 
practical, and supreme regard for his sound worldly 
and religious culture. Wlio now can describe the solid 
comfort and profit w^hich w^ould accrue to the black 
man, our country, and the world, if our Christianity 



78 THE NATIONAL CONTIIOYERSY. 

were only permitted to rectify the practical judgment 
of the North touching the true interests of the man of 
color, and the true obligations of the white man, Nortli 
and South. 

3. Christianity will correct the conscience of the 
North upon this subject. 

The providence of God lends its sanction to the view 
of obligation suggested. Six capital acts comprise the 
history of the slave in America. By the first, he was 
separated from his native land and thus cut off from the 
fountains of paganism. By the second, he was landed 
on American shores and exposed to all the lights of 
civilization. By the third, he was placed here in the 
relation of a slave, and thus, preserved, he could become 
the object of a benevolent plan of progressive eleva- 
tion. By the fourth, he became extensively christian- 
ized, and thus qualified to save others. By the fifth, 
an expulsive power returns him to his native country 
as fast as he obtains his freedom in this. And by the 
sixth he is re-established there in civilized. Christian 
colonies, and thus most effectually empowered to radiate 
recovering light among the degraded masses of the 
surrounding aborigines. I forget not man's evil part 
in all this history, but I would not close my eyes to the 
good use which God would make of man's bad con- 
duct.* And, oh, if we could but concentrate the atten- 
tion of the North upon these facts ; if we could per- 
suade lier to remember that b}^ votes in the constitu- 
tional convention her fathers opened the door for the 
importation of these African natives : that by their own 
ships they bore a prominent part in transporting them 
* See Note C. 



THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 79 

from their native homes and selling them as slaves to 
the South ; and especially, that the inherited proceeds 
of these slave sales are, this day, in the hands of their 
posterity ; shoukl we not thereby plant one truth 
deep in her conscience, viz. That the great present 
duty of the North to the man of color in our country 
is, as much as in her lies, to do her part and work har- 
moniously with the South in accomplishing that bene- 
volent purpose for which God in providence allowed 
his importation. Instead of doing tliis, to give the 
South no credit for all she has done in elevating these 
imported Africans; to give the South no credit for all 
she has done in christianizing \\\q^q imported Africans ; 
to take no interest and lend no aid in the one operation 
or the other, but, even to the destruction of the nation, 
to fight the South in behalf of abstract rights, which 
these fellow-men, even yet, have no capacity to enjoy, 
seems to me just the most unwise, unkind, and unfaith- 
ful mind for which, in the premises, the I^ortli could be 
responsible. 

Oh, let our Christianity come to our help, and rectify 
the consciences of the North, and bring up a strong 
sense both of the honor and of the duty, just so far as 
the Southern man will open the way, to stand by his 
side and work with him for the solid social and spiritual 
welfare of the slave. Let the North but do this, and 
what a healing of breaches? What a dispensation of 
mercies ! what a brightening of prospects ! should we 
witness on every hand. 

4. Christianity will correct the aims of the North, 
touching the institution of the South. 

What are the great interests of the colored population 



80 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

of the Soutli, and of the world, in the principles of thei 
management? Decree the immediate and universai 
emancipation of the slaves of the South, and from one" 
end of Christendom to the other, countless multitudes 
shall shout the praise of the edict. Yet a more censur- 
able mismanagement of the case it were hard to plan. 
As for the black man's liberation, it would be a death-i 
blow to him, and he would disappear from the earth in a 
very few generations ; and as for the liberties and hopes 
of men in such a condition, in all time to come, libera- 
tion would be a death-blow to the true principle of their 
protection. Would you seek the true interests of our 
colored fellow- men, set it down, that the social elevation 
of the man of color, his capacity to take care of himself 
— this, this is his very greatest, because most needed 
blessing in this life. Behold the four millions of slaves' 
of the South ! For physical comfort, general intelli- 
gence, and the prospect of improvement in both, anothei 
such community of colored men cannot be found upor 
the face of the earth. You arrange, therefore, for thc^ 
best good of the slave of the South at present, by per 
petuating and improving the very causes which hav(' 
brought up such multitudes of his color to a social sum 
mit level, so far above that of any similar number ill 
the world? Wi^ conversion to God I I need not say, i 
pre-eminently his very highest good. There are this day ii' 
the United States, probably 600,000 colored communi 
cants of the church of Christ. Collect all the \nov\ 
achieved by the combined missionary energies of th 
world, measure it by souls saved, and you would pre 
bably fail to find 200,000 hopeful, heathen converts— a 
told. To Christian philanthropy, is not this multituc 



THE PKINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 81 

f colored Christian professors a most delightful and 
icouraging fact ? If a greater number of colored 
hristians have died in the past than live at present, 
len probably millions of souls have already been 
■deemed among the slaves of the South. When of old 
od brought the black man from his country, and 
laced him in our hands, He said to America, *' Keep 
:is man. If by any means he be missing, then shall 
ly life be for his life." In the keeping of this pri- 
)ner the South has not done what she should have 
jcomplished. The North has been yet more remiss in 
er part of the common charge ; but we will both shout 
ar thanksgivings to God in view of the glorious work 
e himself has principally wrought. 
Let the North study what God has done, and take 
wnsel of our glorious Christianity. If she does, she 
ill instantly dismiss from her aims her wild attempt to 
laugurate, in behalf of the man of color, a liberty- 
'iumph, which he has no present culture to appreciate, 
fid discard from her soul that feverish apprehension of 
^e political power of the South, which has led her to 
Ian the eternal confinement of the slave in his geogra- 
hical prison (see Appendix). She will fix her heart 
pon this imported, intrusted sti'anger, and cherish a 
enerous interest in his destiny. She will love to feel if 
|0d has done so much for his truest, best interests in 
16 past, when the philanthropy of his fellow-men, 
[orth and South, was so feeble and questionable, what 
light not God do for him and his posterity in the 
iture, if North and South would now shake hands in a 
ovenant of sincere kindness to their humble protege? 
•he will say to the bondman of the South, " Even to 

4* 



82 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

promote Tiuman weal, I may not do wrong ; go forth, 
therefore, into all the earth ; increase and multiply, and 
the God of thy fathers be with thee. All tliat we can 
do, through the direction of those intrusted with the 
more immediate supervision, by hearty good-will, pecu- 
niary contribution, wise suggestion, and earnest praj^er 
to advance your progressive training towards an ulti- 
mate capacity for all secular and spiritual blessing, we 
pledge ourselves henceforth to consecrate. When we 
look into the future, should the heavens be overcast at 
times, and terrors spring up again, and sight fail, we 
will bring up the better vision of faith, and say, 
* Hitherto the Lord hath helped thee.' ' Surely good- 
ness and mercy shall follow thee all the days of thy 
life.' And finally, under all the fearful peculiarities of 
thy condition, and the dark forebodings of our own 
unbelief, we will strive to cherish the cheerful confidence 
that the consummation of thy destiny will be as glorious 
as its commencement was unparalleled. ' For ask now 
of the days that are past, which were before thee, since 
the day that God created man upon earth, and ask from 
the one side heaven unto the other, whether there hath 
been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been 
heard like it ? Did ever God assay to go and take him 
a nation from the midst of another nation, by tempta- 
tions, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a 
mighty hand, and by a stretched-out arm, and by great 
terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for 
you before the eyes of the world.' " Who can believe 
that our God — at work to save the world — by all this 
stupendous power, at all this terrific cost, has taken a 
nation from the very bosom of the darkest degradations 



I 



THE PRINCIPLE OF PACIFICATION. 83 

of tlie fall, transported tliem half around the world, and 
set them down amidst the brightest shinings of the 
saving light of heaven, and meant no good by it ? 
Duties are ours — events are God's. Let us bring up our 
faith to the loudness of the call of Providence. Let us 
look away from the comfortless temporal to the glorious 
spiritual bearings of the subject ! Side by side let us 
work with God, for God's benign ends. And though 
thick darkness hangs over our vision of the issue, let us 
remember, that He who directs the movement is omni- 
scient. In our pLace, under his lead, let us work faith- 
fully, for the glory of our leader, and the present and 
eternal good of our African fellow-men ; and let us keep 
up a good heart ; and for one, I am free to express my 
trust, that in some way — nor do I care to know his plan — 
God is able, and has purposed to make the consum- 
mation of this movement as transcendently glorious as 
he has made its commencement in our day pre-eminently 
peculiar. Oh, that I could heave up all my fellow-men 
of this nation from the miserable littleness of quarrelling 
over the social relations of this mighty subject, to the 
Christian elevation of looking to the hand of God, 
and working supremely f<)r the best good of the fellow- 
men he has intrusted to our keeping ! 

Oh, my country, what is to become of thee? Is 
there then to be no more a United States of America ! 
So long the pride of the North American, and the 
glorj^ of the world ? How it wrings the heart to think 
of it! What can be done in this dark hour? Com- 
promises may connect^ but can never unite the people. 
Organizations hand the body, sentiment only welds the 
parts. Oh, friend and brother of the IN'ortli, I fear you 



84 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

liave had too mucli to do in working out these 
dark issues. Wrong is rarely confined to one party — 
nor do I insist upon it here. But in behalf of yourself 
and our JSTorthern brethren, for God's sake, and for 
man's — will you not give impartial heed to the serious 
convictions addressed to you on these sheets ? Pray, 
think of it ! If the opinions here expressed are true, 
and you will heartily adopt them — this shall save the 
nation, as nothing else can ! Before the God of our 
country, do you not believe them, in the main, to be 
true ? Are you not assured that the [N'orthern fathers 
were never authorized by Southern delegates in the 
constitutional convention to expect that slavery should 
be brought to a speedy close ? In your heart, then, let 
the South have the benefit of this solid truth. In con- 
sideration for commercial privileges granted by the 
South, are you not assured that the I^Torth covenanted 
to yield to the South all such claims and toleration 
upon the subject of slavery as would secure to her, in 
this relation, a comfortable, honorable, and profitable 
participation in the Union % Then, in your very soul, 
give to the South the full benefit of this most important 
right. Whatever pride, passion, assumption, and mis- 
conduct may have been justly laid to the charge of the 
South, are you not convinced that, on the whole, the 
South has not wandered very far from Jier stipula- 
tions in the great constitutional compact upon which 
the government was founded ? Let the South then 
have the full advantage of this important admission in 
your mind. Are you not assured, that the North, for 
long years, has allowed her people to carry out a vexa- 
tious persecution of the South, ir^ the very teeth of her 



THE PKINCirLE OF PACIFICATIOiN'. 85 

own slavery guarantees, which has largely despoiled 
Southern men of that peace, respect, and profit in the 
Union, so sacredly pledged ? If this be indeed so — and 
surely you will not deny it — should you not be willing 
to concede the wrong and make amends for it ? Finally 
— Has not our national controversy its origin very 
largely in this unhappy truth : viz. that the religion of 
the Lord Jesus Christ has had too little to do with 
almost all Northern virtue upon the subject of slavery ? 
In the leading class of opponents, and in all others 
under their influence, has not a fanatical spirit been 
allowed to disturb kind relations, unsettle sound judg- 
ment, demoralize good conscience, and set the heart 
upon disorganizing ends ! Come now, friend ! Speak 
out from the sincerities of your soul — to save our glori- 
ous country — will you not do right ? Will you not act 
sensibly, honorably, justly? Will you not permit the 
God of the nation, by his most blessed book, in all the 
matter of our difference, to breathe a kinder temper 
into your heart, to shed sounder light upon your under- 
standing, to set up a juster rule in your conscience, and 
place before you wiser ends than you have sought ? 
But do this, and think of it — It shall save our people, 
as nothing else can. For — justice to the South ! On the 
one hand, it is the very last element of hopeful recon- 
struction of our divided country ; on the other, the most 
potent agent of a sound fraternity between our 
bordering nations ! Only let the North do right — only 
let her see, feel, and say — "We have all gone wrong 
in tills matter of slavery. The South never troubled 
us in her part <>f the contract, but fairly gave us all 
she engaged to surrender. We, on the contrary, have 



86 THE NATIONAL CONTROVERSY. 

not secured to her what we covenanted to convey. 
"We \i2iyQ disturbed her where we promised j^eac^. We 
have saifered her to be diskoiioi^ed where we vowed ^?'(?- 
tection. And we have allowed to be taken away from 
her what we ourselves promised to restore. In a Avord, 
we have not kept our hargain with the South. No ! 
we have not ! !" Now, my Northern friend ! Let the 
South do or fall to do what she may — will you do 
right ! For the sake of our country, the church, and 
the world — do right, my friend — do right. And by the 
constitution of things, and the fidelity of its author, 
heaven and earth shall see what the North and the 
South shall feel — that the tvork of righteousness is — 
peace. 



APPENDIX. 



Deism is that working of human faculties which accepts 
the existence, but rejects the character of God. It is the 
child of the fall, and therefore, spiritually, the perfect anta- 
gonism of the God of the Scriptures. It cannot shut out 
nature's displays of the majesty, wisdom, power, and good- 
ness of Jehovah, but it does not like to retain in its know- 
ledge his stricter attributes — holiness, justice, truth, and 
immutability — and therefore repudiates the entire revela- 
tion of God in Jesus Christ. Thus, deism reaches God by 
the very narrowest possible glance ; and this, as we have 
said, altogether one-sided ; embracing his natural, but 
excluding his moral perfections. The primary result is 
this; Deism never sees the law of God ; because this is 
built upon God's moral perfections as well as his natural 
relations. Consequently, to any valuable purpose, the deist 
never feels religious responsibility, nor natural depravity, 
nor divine condemnation, nor salvation by Jesus, nor glory 
beyond the grave. The ultimate result leaves the deist no 
heaven which he can appreciate beyond the fruition of 
natural rights. The illimitable enjoyment of property, 
character, liberty^ or life, constitutes the highest good 
that ever visited the imagination of deism. American 
history very naturally fixed the American heart upon 
liberty. British oppression had qualified us to relish it, by 
privation. The struggles of the Revolution endeared it, 
through hope deferred. The Declaration of Independence 



88 APPENDIX. 

brought it near, by heroic assertion. The surrender of 
Yorktown flushed the soul with its conscious achievement. 
The praise of foreign nations for its happy developments 
amontist us, filled our hearts with an exultant sense of its 
admirable properties ; while the Fourth of July, our day 
of liberty-worship, annually feeds our devotion with its 
glorious reminiscences. 

It was perfectly natural that our passionate embrace of 
liberty should ultimately swell into fanaticism. Why not ? 
Fanaticism is a compound of two mental forces : the one 
direct, seizing its object ; the other collateral, shutting off 
intermeddling claimants. Destroy the deism of the mind, 
and you open it to the inlet of a spiritual world, which 
must break up the maddening absorption of the soul in any 
single secularity. The immortality of man, his responsi- 
bility to God, the corruption of his nature, damnation to 
the sinner, salvation to the believer, the last great day, the 
fires of hell, the raptures of heaven — such topics as these 
must exert a mighty attraction upon human thought, and 
furnish lofty standards for the measurement of mere secu- 
larities, and of necessity must lower down earthly liberty 
to its proper comparative insignificance. But deism nul- 
lifies all superior objects, and thereby protects the soul 
against all foreign intrusion, and leaves it to spend itself 
exclusively, intensely, and perpetually (in our case) upon 
the glories of liberty, and thus philosophically breeds 
fanaticism. Liberty, therefore, with very many in our 
country, is the heaven of deism. It is the one highest, 
chiefest good of man. All else is nothing to it. ^ He who 
is stripped of his liberty is the accursed of the earth. 

Now, when this fanatical liberty of the North fixes its 
eyes upon the slave of the South, is it any wonder that it 
should have roused creation to overthrow Southern insti- 
tutions? The fanatic's eye sees nothing to relieve the 



APPENDIX. 89 

calamity it surveys. One dark, forbidding object fills the 

entire range of his vision. For his own advantage, a 

tyrant has robbed a fellow-man of the supreme good, and 

infixed upon him the sum of all evils. No wonder he 

heaves and swells. O the fancies ! the fancies that live 

in this world ! This man's mind has lost its balance, and 

been turned upside-down. I shall shock and enrage him 

to the very core of his heart by the utterance of a simple 

truth. In view of Christianity's doctrine of an immortality, 

at hand, of unmixed and immutable good or evil, it is a 

matter of the most consummate non-importance whether 

man's brief life on earth is spent in slavery or in freedom. 

Place liberty at the head of all secularities, and yet there 

is no one spiritual element of an immortal being, in itself 

considered, that is not worth more than all the natural 

liberties of the generations of the earth. So thinks the 

infinite mind. For during all the ages wherein the spirit 

of knowledge dwelt in the souls of men, this very liberty, 

to every possible extent, on every hand, was both crushed 

and enjoyed, both individually and nationally ; yet, though 

that spirit was charged with worlds upon worlds of all sorts 

of messages to man from the God of light, not one single 

word did he ever utter to speak the ignominy of slavery 

or the glory of liberty. The enormous misconception 

which makes up this fanatical idea of liberty, which turns 

everything upside-down, and makes the highest and the 

lowest to change places — surely, in a world built to be 

governed by truth, such a principle must work incalculable 

mischief. Let us rapidly trace the course of this deistical 

fanaticism in our country. 

I. — It depreciates moral principle, 

I say not that extreme anti-slavery men have no principle 
— that, in general, they are not as good or even better than 



90 APPENDIX. 

other men. But I say that their fanaticism is immoral in 
its tendency, and rather damages than improves their virtue, 
because by inherent necessity it exerts a power unfriendly 
to a sense of moral obligation. This is indicated by its 
temj^er. Love is the basis of all virtue. Excite the man ; 
start his fanaticism, and you will mark two things. His 
every breath seems to be violence and bitterness : nor does 
he appear to possess, on this point, anything like love in his 
nature. Recollect, the Spirit of knowledge, the Spirit of 
holiness, and Spirit of love, is one and the same Spirit. If, 
therefore, you drive the Spirit of love out of your heart on 
any one subject, by that very act you have probably 
expelled the Spirit of truth and righteousness also. It is 
still more clearly indicated by its structure. The mind of 
the fanatic holds one dominant thought, to which all else in 
the mind, or that enters it, must yield. In our case the 
ruling thought is this : To hold a fellow man in bondage is 
probably the greatest, certainly the clearest sin in tlie 
world. Whatever comes along therefore, call it argument, 
obligation, or what you will, to modify his sentiments — has 
less evidence to commend it to his adoption than his 
governing thought has. Remember, too, that there is a 
furor in the heart as well as a halo in the intellect of the 
fanatic. The moment, therefore, any separating element, 
no matter what, arises between his heart and its object, so 
ferocious is the adhesion that his soul will hate it instantly, 
assail it vehemently, and expel it violently. The result is 
that all moral considerations, like everything else, have but 
little power over such a mind, and will certainly be depre- 
ciated. Tell him that the constitution of the country is 
built upon the compact of the fathers — that in consideration 
of the solid advantages surrendered by the South, we and 
our posterity have solemnly promised to concede the 
authority of the master. What is his reply ? Let the 



APPENDIX. 91 

constitution and the covenant slide — freedom is inalienable ! 
Tell him the powers that be are ordained of God — that 
submission to law is Christian duty — and that our govern- 
ment demands of its citizens that they acknowledge the 
bondage of the servant. What will he say ? Down with 
the government ! It traverses man's clearest conviction 
to disparage man's highest weal. Bring the Bible itself to 
lay its teachings upon the mind of this man. Tell him that 
God says to the bondman : " Art thou called being a slave, 
care not for it ! When you have lost your liberty you 
have not lost your all. Obey your master faithfully." 
What does he reply ? " Liberty ! liberty ! ! This is the 
grand pi'imary right ! This the chief blessing of all ! 
Away with the Bible if it crosses all natural instincts to 
break down all natural rights." The fi\ct is, all adverse 
obligation is a dead letter in the line of this man's excite- 
ment. You cannot touch his conscience. Try the experi- 
ment. How can he conscientiously receive the protection 
of the government when, so far from rendering allegiance, 
he tears away from his master that slave which the govern- 
ment orders him to retain if he should find him a fugitive ? 
He feels no difficulty. How can he trample southern rights 
under his feet, and yet consent to go on accumulating the 
blessings of commerce in the use of a" privilege put into 
his hand by the southern man expressly in consideration 
of his promise to respect southern rights ? But he is 
sensible of no compunctions. A very good man he 
may be in a thousand respects : on this point his moral 
nature is laid in the dust. The decisive fact is this : 
The inspiration of his object is the only law of the 
fanatic. To him this is all rectitude. All covenants 
and principles that ^vould break the hold of his mad- 
dened mind are withs upon the limbs of the Hebrew 
giant. Thus, you perceive, fanaticism breaks every moral 



92 APPENDIX. 

ligament which should hokl a man in union with his 
neighbor. 

II. — Deistical anti-slavery tramples upon all rights and 
interests ichich cross its path. — Love for the slave, in the 
bosom of the abolitionist, soon began to give way before 
the fierce passion of hate to the master. Now, it would 
appear that the best interests of the beneficiary must be 
saciificed to insatiate hostility to the slaveholder. No 
ordinary demonstration of this fict would seem to be fur- 
nished by that pi-oposed interminable confinement of the 
slave within the limits of his present geographical abode, 
in which the soul of the fanatic appears to find such exult- 
ant satisfaction. To lay off impassable jail-bounds for four 
millions of rapidly growing colored population in the heart 
of the most civilized nation under heaven — what a singular 
oflTspring from that mind which boasts of its love of liberty, 
especially the liberty of the black man. 

Before entering upon the discussion of this subject, I 
would premise again that I do not primarily embrace here 
a large class of persons, who, like the abolitionists, object to 
Southern claims touching fugitives, territories, slave states, 
etc., and who hold to slave confinement., etc. etc., but have 
a very diflTerent mind on the whole subject — different views, 
motives, and ends. Yet this, in general, is true of such per- 
sons. They are more or less open both to the influence 
and the charge of abolitionism as they do in a greater or 
less degree sympathize with its doctrines and its spirit. 
On this topic the characteristic difference is this : In pro- 
portion to his separation from fanatical anti-slavery the party 
will be apt to look out upon the interests of the world 
•and seek to stay evil and do good; while the abolitionist, 
under the dominion of his too fierce fiinaticism, Avill 
be more strongly prompted to look in upon slavery and 
the slaveholder, and by a cordon of free states drawn 



APPENDIX. 93 

close around, work to incarcerate, environ, and strangle the 
monsters. 

1. This measure of slave confinement upon a gigantic 
scale must ultimately destroy the liberties and hopes of the 
slave by preventing their natural development. Supposing 
the South to enjoy in the future her ancient liberty of loco- 
motion, and that the same privileges hereafter shall sustain 
the same ratio of increase, it is calculated that her colored 
population will amount to near fifty millions in 1960. This 
stupendous result ! Who does not see that it must prove 
an enormous abortion, if you undertake to develop it 
Avithin the geographical bounds prescribed ? But tell me ! 
Why have not these colored fellow-men at the South, as good 
a right to live, and grow, and flourish in the earth as any 
other people under heaven ? Why are not their natural 
rights equal to those of any other branch of Adam's family ? 
When God gave the products and liberties of the earth to 
man in the garden, did he not design that the man of color 
should have an equal share with the white man ? When 
God commanded the race to increase and multiply and fill 
the earth, did he not address the one as certainly as the 
other ? Simply for the color of his skin, my Northern 
friend, why should you cast a fellow-man from a gift and a 
privilege which God himself has made the common heri- 
tage of the race ? Under his former auspices, for genera- 
tions he has been steadily growing in a host of the richest 
natural gifts. He certainly has constantly improved in 
physical health, comeliness, and power ; in intelligence, cha- 
racter, piety, happiness, and universal culture. He has 
certainly made steady progress from the beginning towards 
a development which may ultimately qualify him, every 
way, to take his full part in all the social responsibilities, 
dignities, and enjoyments of his race. Why will you cut 
down at a blow all these richest blessings and hopes of the 



94 APPENDIX. 

black man ? After the God of Providence, through his 
Southern master, has done so much for him and brought him 
on so far from the very darkest and cruellest barbarism 
towards hopeful deliverance from his every native degrada- 
tion — by your barbarous edict of slave imprisonment, oh, 
why would you tear him away from the bright hopes which 
have long been very slowly but very certainly dawning 
upon his futui'e, and throw him back into a condition far 
more calamitous than that from which the slave-ship 
rescued him? My Northern brother, change your heart 
towards the black man. Love him warmly, as many a 
Southern man does ; in his place, let him go out freely into 
all the earth, and increase, and multiply, and improve, and 
enjoy himself, as other men do ; and go thou down and 
stand beside his master, your brother and neighbor, and 
kindly converse with him touching all those wholesome 
laws, institutions, and arrangements which may most hap- 
pily develop all his fiiculties, rights, and interests through 
time to come ; and give him the full enjoyment of his pre- 
sent happy opening for his own temporal and eternal good, 
and the elevation of his continent ; and you will put your 
hand to one of the very noblest and largest works man 
ever undertook since he fell from the likeness in which God 
made him. Yes ! Do this, and you will prove yourself a 
far more sincere and sensible friend of the bond and the 
free than your insufferably tyrannical edict of Southern 
impalement bids fair to make you. 

2. But this abolition discipline of the master, by the 
eternal confinement of the slave, does not hmit its malice 
to the lower class of natural rights. There is a sense in 
which it virtually strikes at human life itself with the most 
unsparing hand. The nature and objects of Southern society 
require that the whites should dwell amongst the blacks in 
equal if not superior numbers. This Northern project of 



APPENDIX. 95 

Southern impalement is responsible therefore for crowding 
within the present territorial limits of the South in the year 
1960, an agricultural population of near one hundred mil- 
lions of souls. Domesticate this enormous multitude of 
human beings upon the territory around which deistical 
anti-slavery would build such insurmountable walls, and the 
gloom and the havoc which, though not 2>laTmed, must 
inevitably follow, who can depict? So dense a population 
in so hot a climate, cholera, yellow fever, and plague must 
mow them down by tens of thousands ! Forced to go out 
and build their domiciles, and breathe the air along the sick- 
liest swamps of the country, climate fever nlust waste them 
fearfully through all the hot months, of the summer ; com- 
pelled to go forth and plant the arid sands and exhausted 
fields which cover half a hundred square miles in many 
portions of the land, what multitudes must starve to death 
for the lack of the common bread of life ? The unprosper- 
ous condition of the master, and the darkening lot of the 
servant, must breed mutual discontent, and what ill-blood, 
insurrection, and murder, from time to time, must agonize 
and depopulate the universal region ! In a word, this dark, 
malignant decree, whatever benign intentions may sustain 
it in many minds, must eventually roll forth one broad 
wave of desolation and destruction over the entire popula- 
tion of the district inclosed. Remember ! In point of 
criminality, it matters not much whether I put a bullet 
through a man's heart and kill him instanter, or employ a 
month in gradually strangling an embryo ere it comes 
forth to breathe in this world of life! Look out now upon 
communities which the past and the present assure you do 
certainly possess all the capacities, surroundings, and gene- 
rative power, under ordinary providence, to throw out 
upon earth a hundred millions of healthy, hopeful people in 
1960. Move up and seize these nations! By confinement, 



96 APPENDIX. 

oppression, and strangulation, deliberately prevent the 
birth of this prodigious population ! Before God and man, 
is it not somewhat as though you had regularly set to work, 
upon just such a multitude, the necessary causes of their 
destruction ? And does it require you to stretch your 
imagination very far beyond the boundaries of reason to 
enrol the probable issues of this incarceration of the South 
amongst the most stupendous catastrophes that ever 
stained the records of humanity ? When poor Lopez was 
strapped hard and fast to the Spanish chair, and the exe- 
cutioner behind began to screw up the metallic girt about 
his throat, I almost wonder that the earth did not shriek, 
out from beneath, when, in an instant, the blood, cut off 
from its return to the heart, rushed out to the extremities 
of the skin, blackened every pore of his face, blood-shot 
both his glaring eyes, and before a crowd of living men, 
put the poor wretch to a death that forcibly bereft him of 
nature's last relief, a groan or a struggle. Look ! my mad- 
dened fi-iend of the North, look upon your worse than 
metallic throttle ! Have you not thrown it around the 
necks of the forthcoming generations of a whole family of 
civilized states? By your own cruel, penal impalement 
may you not be near to turning the screw that shall 
garotte on this free soil of America scores of millions of 
your countrymen ? Is this a becoming work for the gal- 
lant friend of liberty and of tlie black man ? The most inhu- 
man suffocation of one hundred and forty-six English 
prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta ! The pestilence, 
death, and putrefaction of thousands of African natives 
cruelly crowded between the decks of the slave-ship ! are 
terrible tragedies. But how narrow their dimensions ! 
How speedy their relief! Ah, think ! In your great black 
dungeon of the South, when population shall become too 
dense for production, and labor and living too hard for 



APPENIUX. 97 

content, and hope can extract nothing but the blackness of 
darkness from tlie future, and starvation, and insurrection, 
and pestilence shall become the order of the day, and 
untold disasters shall agonize the souls and mow down the 
bodies of struggling generations, then shall be practically 
portrayed not the catastrophe which deistical anti-slavery 
malignantly set out to accomplish, but what would seem to 
be the legitimate result of that lack of philanthropy, of that 
unreflecting malignity which animates its persecution of 
the slaveholder. 

We had seen that the fanatic would tread down the Con- 
stitutional rights of the slaveholder, and the august author- 
ity of the government. N'oic^ we are assured that there is 
nothing too dear or sacred to be sacrificed to the demands 
of his iuexorable Avill. The man of color, he whose patron 
he had assumed to be before the eyes of the world, he 
in whose defence he had drawn his sv/ord and perilled his 
peace — even he — must suff'er the loss of all, if vengeance 
upon the grand enemy calls for it. He must be thrown 
into a dungeon, cut oif from God's primary gift to man of 
the liberties and blessings of the earth; bereft of the 
divine privilege of unrestrained propagation and universal 
progress ; nor matters it much whether he be wasted from 
the flice of the earth, so the fanatic's vengeance upon his 
enemy be glutted. 

What, on earth, can safely confederate with such a prin- 
ciple ? We have seen that there is no such 7noral charac- 
ter as can bind the fanatic to any course of procedure at 
variance with his special object ; and now we observe that 
there is no interest or class of men which should or will be 
willing to trust either his justice or his mercy in a social 
union. 

III.— Finally, it destroys political structure. In a repub- 
lic, no union, no government. Without common consent, 

5 



98 APPENDIX. 

there can be no public control. He therefore destroys the 
government, who makes the political association of grand 
sections of the people insufferable. From its earliest lise, 
fanatical anti-slavery, with a steadily augmenting force, has 
been pressing out upon the South its adverse doctrines, 
charges, demands, and procedures, until its violent, inexo- 
rable opposition has destroyed primitive affinities, set up 
invidious distinctions, and multiplied fretting hostilities 
beyond further endurance, and by its direct and resulting 
influence compelled the South to seek her peace in secession. 
To a considerable extent, all the forces of society have been 
subordinated, very naturally, to the accomplishment of this 
work. Learning — with her schools, colleges, lectures, 
periodicals, novels, and graver works : politics — with her 
parties, platforms, speeches, papers, and patronage : reli- 
gion — with her tracts and organs, her family and Sabbath- 
school training, her sanctuary prayers and sermons, and 
her ecclesiastical protests and prohibitions : in a word, 
almost every power amongst men, organized or irregular, 
is subsidized to get up and bring out an " effective aggres- 
sion" upon slavery throughout the country. Upon the 
feelings of the South, by all these forces, through all these 
channels, this severe spirit, directly or indirectly, for long 
years has been pouring out a flood of irritating defamation. 
From the ownership of the South, Northern population 
along the borders, for long years, through byways and 
railroads above ground and below it, have stood ready 
to bear away every slave who could be disaffected and 
removed. Against the Constitutional rights of the South, 
for long years, throughout large portions of the North, a 
strong public sentiment and strong State legislation have 
sprung up, ostensibly to prevent Southern kidnapping of 
Northern freemen, but purposely to oppose Northern 
rendition of Southern fugitives. Agninst the honorable 



APPENDIX. 99 

equality of the South, from the political heights of the 
nation you may now hear these dominant pronmiciamentos: 
"iV'o 7norG slave States !^^ — though slave States took part 
in forming the Constitution, have a door opened to their 
admission in the very foundations of the Constitution, and 
from the earliest days liave been constantly added to the 
Union. " JVo more tra7iS20ortatlon of slaves into the terri- 
tories /" — though the Constitution was constructed to 
acconnnodate slave-holding territories, and though in early 
days slaves were permitted to dwell for generations in the 
only territories of the country permanently free — made so, 
by the way, through the generosity of the South. " Per- 
petual impalement of all slaves loithin their present geo- 
graphical limits .^" This, though it is undeniable that any 
and every one of these imprisoning States, if it pleases so 
to do, has the most perfect right, by the Constitution of 
the country, to import all these slaves of the South, and 
domesticate them as such within their own territorial 
boundaries. 

All this fanaticism has done, not by one act of its own 
power, but by enlisting the co-operation of all sympa- 
thizing sentiment as far as she was able to secure it, seek- 
ing therein, however, more violent ends than many proposed 
who sustained the same measures. Now when the South 
reflected that from year to year it was in vain that she 
lifted her voice in solenm protest against all this unc(Misti- 
tutional persecution of Southern rights; that an anti- 
Southern party, if not perfectly, yet considerably imbued 
with this anti-Southern spirit, holds now the reins of gov- 
ernment in its hands ; and that recently, when the South 
was in the very act of secession, the dominant party, though 
strongly pressed, declined to provide satisfactory security 
against those mischiefs which the South felt she had great 
reason to apprehend from 'he unfriendly spirit and uncou- 



100 APPENDIX. 

stitiuional progress of those now in power; in view of 
tliese and other consideration^, she concluded that in order 
to form a more perfect nnion, establish justice, insure 
domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, i3ro- 
mote the general w^elfare, and secure the blessings of liberty 
to herself and her posterity, it became her solemn duty to 
dissolve her connexion with those States whose opposite 
and dominant principles and interests had now placed 
beyond her hope tlie legitimate objects of political union. 

Does any man inquire — What is it that has dissolved the 
American Union ? Address your attention to that deistical, 
fanatical opposition to slavery, whose ferocious appreciation 
of natural rights knows nothing of the balancing power of 
Christianity ; which has long been dividing conventions, 
families and parties; churches, societies and denominations, 
all over the country; beyond all question this agent exerts 
a still higher power, and dissolves States and breaks gov- 
ernment. Ah, how true is this ! Were it possible to 
extend an arm over the past, and lay hold of the very first 
stirrings of this principle, and tear out from American 
history all its direct and remote agency to the present 
hour, you would thereby leave the North and South so 
heartily united that creation could hardly drive them 
asunder. 

What now shall we think of deistical anti-slavery .^* I 
will not say that no promptings of sympathy, no sense of 
justice, no generous bearing, no manly intrepidity, have 
throbbed in the breast of our misguided fellow-man. I dare 
not say that there dwell not in his soul elements which every 
noble man is forced to admire. But this I do say: His 
fanaticism, analysed, reveals, in astounding development, the 
unconscious but enormous hostility of sin to reason as well 
as to rectitude. In springing into life^ abolition cuts off 
* Note n. 



APPENDIX. 101 

God from man, and man from God, by nullifying that law 
which connects them. Ifentally^ it upturns the constitution 
of things by lifting liberty above praise and sinking Chris- 
tianity below contempt. Morally^ it tramples under foot 
love, conscience, compacts, government, and revelation 
itself, if they cross its creed, and would unlock its hold upon 
its object. Practically^ it ruptures all it touches — families, 
parties, churches, nations. And finally^ such is its malignant 
and reckless will, it never stays to mark that the liberties, 
hopes, and lives of patronized nations are under its feet, if 
this but seems the shortest way to run down and crush out 
that which it hums to destroy. 

Is it any wonder that our nation is divided ? What else 
could be expected of a principle so self-icilled^ unreasonable^ 
immoral^ malignant^ and reckless^ set to work within the 
dominion of regnant^ wise, holy, and imm.utahle perfection. 



102 APPENDIX. 



Note A. 



YiRGiNiA, Maryland, and Delaware, in early days, entertained the 
most honorable views upon the subject of slavery, if they were not the 
most efficient. Virginia, by the ordinance of '87, ceded to the general 
government her north-western territory, embracing the States of Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, now containing a population 
of 7,000,000 souls. Unlike Connecticut, Virginia made no reservation, 
and when the second half of the land shall have been sold at the price 
paid for the first, will have placed in the treasury of the United States 
$200,000,000. This entire territory, vastly against her pecuniary interest, 
in demonstration of tlie sincerity of her anti-slavery opinions, she dedicated 
to freedom. She expressed her sincere conviction, moreover, by a vote 
of her legislature, that it became her to manumit her slaves, at a proper 
time. Private emancipation had been practised for a long time. Through 
a course of years the mind of Virginia was undergoing a change as to the 
benefits and duty of this practice. In 1832 she made the definitive conclu- 
sion that the experiment was a failure ; that emancipation wrought injury 
alike to the servant and the commonwealth. It is a mistake to ascribe 
this change of views to the high price of cotton. The average price of 
cotton for twelve years previous to 1832, by American and British records, 
was more than twelve and a half cents per pound; since that period to 
the present day, the average price has been less than ten cents and a half 
In 1833, it should be remembered, the American Anti-slavery Society was 
formed, and the abolition agitation commenced at the North, and has never 
ceased from that day to drive the South further and still further from every 
thought of emancipation. 

Let it be observed, first, that although the fathers may have entertained 
the opinion that tlie Northern tier of Southern States would probably 
emancipate their slaves, these States made no concession to the North on 
this subject, nor was there anything like a pledge given by them. 
Observe again, that the North were in no condition either to demand or 
even receive a pledge. They had exhibited a mental instability which 
prevented the possibility of any such thing. They came near, as frontier's- 
men say, to rolling logs with the pro-slavery States. " You help me to roll 
my log of commerce into the constitution, and I will help you to roll your 
log of slavery into the constitution." Virginia and Delaware stood firm on 
their anti-slavery ground, and any such notion as a pledge on this subject 



APrENDIX. 103 

by the border States to the Xorlh is preposterous. But observe once 
more, the expectation of the fathers that slavery would be speedily aban- 
doned by the South, in an important sense, could not rest upon Virginia, 
Maryland, and Delav/are. The difficulty did not rest with them, and could 
not be removed by them. It was the extreme South that needed slavery, 
that desired slaver}"-, and was determined to preserve slavery. It -was the 
extreme South only, then, whose co-operation was necessary to encourage 
iJie expectation of the fathers. But the Northern fathers, for their own ends, 
leagued themselves with the South, and encouraged the importation of 
slaves, and justified their own expectation of the continuance rather than 
the disa.ppearance of slavery. 



Note B. 

I am aware that, in its February issue, the New-Englander, through one 
of its contributors, professes to review this position, and devotes to it some 
five or six pages, somewhat after the fashion of a rambling, infidel bur- 
lesque. The effort betrays little thought and less argument. 

My proposition consists of three ideas — a missionary — plan — of provi- 
dence. I suppose that God had his part in the transportation of Africans 
to this country : this he seems to discredit. That this act of God was 
according to plan : this he explicitly denies. That God's odj'ect was the 
salvation of the African : this, too, he seems to disbelieve. 

1. By denying God's agency in the slave trade, the doctrine of the 
review destroys God's attributes. Save that exercised by God, is there any 
independent power in the universe ? Has there ever occurred an event in 
the production of which God employed no power ? If the slave trade is 
such an occurrence, then here is a moving agent whom God does not 
pervade. Where is his omnipresence ? Here is an effect produced inde- 
pendent of God's power. Where is his omnipotence 1 Here is an element, 
a means, of which neither God's knowledge nor his goodness makes use. 
Where is his infinite wisdom? AVhere his infinite goodness? Not so 
the Scriptures — " Who vjorketh all things.'^ If this is truth, then God 
wrought the slave trade, and my first position is Scriptural. 

2. By denying God's plan in the slave trade, the doctrine of the review 
destroys God's reign. Does God ever act by chance, or by fate, or igno- 
rantly, or unconsciously ? If not^ then God always acts by plan. But 
the review contends that God had no plan embracing the slave trade, 
because this fact would make God the author of sin. On this principle, 



lOi APPENDIX. 

if God governs the world, lie controls what he does not touch. In nine 
hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand, there is nothing in 
man but sin : and in the one case of every thousand there is not one act 
unmixed with sin. What can that mind mean by God's providence over 
the world, if providence makes no use of human wickedness to accomplish 
the ends of divine mercy ? I had supposed that the chiefest glory of 
providence lay precisely in this fact, that God can and does employ man's 
folly, and wickedness, and malice, and self-destruction, and divine dishonor, 
to develop his own wisdom, and holiness, and grace, in man's salvation, 
and all to his own glory. Clearly the doctrine of the review in the 
New-Englander, that God does not work up man's sin in his providential 
plans, expels God from the government of the w^orld. Not so the Scrip- 
tures. "Who worketh all things" — how? ^^ After the counsel of Ms 
own will." Everything, therefore, that occurs in this world, good or bad, 
is embraced in the schemes of providence, and my second position is 
Soipiural 

3. The doctrine of the review destroys all the dignities and prerogatives 
of the Almighty. It places what, I affirm to be God's agency in the slave 
traile, side by side with man's agency in the same, and pronounces tlie 
moral character of both to be identiciil. Calling up the fact that men 
speak of an operation as "noble and grand," -when its instrumentalities 
are " adapted to the end and worthy to be chosen," the review inquires — 
" Does Dr. Stiles also mean that in this ' stupendous scheme of provi- 
dence' the Lord chose the African slave trade and slavery as worthy 
instrumentalities for carrying out his plan of salvation ? And does he 
give glory to God for his wisdom and preference of so excellent a means 
as the slave trade and slavery to save Africa ? Then let him be con- 
sistent, and give some honor to men, too, for choosing the same, and for 
now practising them, provided only that they seem to be guided by a 
purpose in sympathy with Africa's salvation. Let him condemn no one 
for being ever engaged in slavery and the slave trade," &c. " But if you 
praise God for the choice of slavery and the slave trade, do not blame 
men for the same choice ; only blame them because they are wanting in 
good motives, no matter what their iniquities." A man full of iniquities 
engaged in the slave trade, pray what kind of good motives can he have ? 
The morality of an act depends mainly upon its motive — and you have 
given up almost everything in a bad act when you have given up the bad 
motive. This clumsy lugging in of good motives in this connexion seems 
to indicate a starting back from the ground the mind set out to take. 
But let us examine the comparison instituted. There are three parts to 



APPENDIX. 105 

every act — motive^ means, and object. In the premises, God's motive is 
holy : for it is grace to the guilty. God's means are holy. As creator, 
preserver, and proprietor of the slave-trader, his ship, the wind, and the 
sea, he has a perfect right to make any use of them most pleasing to him- 
self. As creator, preserver, and proprietor of the slave, he has a perfect 
right to send him this instant to perdition as a heathen man and an 
idolater. Every greater contains the less. God, therefore, has a perfect 
right to subject the slave to every possible degree of human oppression or 
temporal suftering. All, all are his own, and he does perfectly right to do 
with all just what he pleases. God's ohject is holy, for in mercy he would 
overrule all for the salvation of the perishing. On the contrary, man's 
motive in the slave trade is purely wicked : for it is love of filthy lucre. 
Man's means are purely wicked : for it is shameless, cruel injustice to a 
fellow creature. And man's oljeci is purely wicked : for he seeks to enrich 
himself upon the wrongs and tears of his unfortunate neighbor. How 
insane and blasphemous to place these two acts in the same category ! 
33ut this is not all. How can he accomplish this, and bring down God's 
act in the premises to the moral level of man's? In one way only. He 
must first demolish God's rights as creator, preserver, benefactor, proprie- 
tor, and king of the universe. "We repeat, the doctrine in the New- 
Englander, of necessity shipwrecks all the dignities and prerogatives of 
Godhead. 

4. The doctrine destroys the word of God. Search ever so diligently, 
and you will fail to find in all the history of the African slave trade of 
modern days an approximation to an act of African slave-traflBc in 
the days and in the family of the patriarch Jacob. Jacob's sons kid- 
napped a free man, their own brother, and sold him in slavery out 
of a Christian into a heathen land. In these three respects, the en- 
slaving of Joseph has no parallel in all the abominable outrages of 
the modern slave-trade. Xowjust what I have said of God and the 
modern slave-trade, the Bible says of God and this most inhuman act. 
Not at all so as to make him the author of sin, yet for the good of man 
God planned and executed it. Says Joseph to his brethren, "Ye sold me 
hither." This is true, and you may well be humbled for it. But this is 
not all the truth of the case, " for God did send me before you to preserve 
UfeJ^ Just so in the numerous captivities of his people, God abundantly 
teaches us, no matter how shocking the atrocities of the human oppressors, 
that he himself planned and executed them all. What a thoughtless 
reader of the Bible our reviewing brother seems to have been, " Why 
does not Dr. Stiles call on us to ponder the stupendous scheme of provi- 

5* 



106 APPENDIX. 

dence," and see that spiritual achievement, the rehgious good of mankind 
in God's employment of all the hatred, and lies, and murderous intents 
of the Scribes and Pharisees resulting finally in the death of his son, in 
order to accomplish the atonement. Does Dr. Stiles preach in that way ? 
" Yes ! exactly in that way, and so does the God of the Scriptures. Him 
being delivered by the deterryiinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have 
taken, and with wicked hands have crucified and slain." Does not God 
here aver, that through the acts of the Scribes and Pharisees "ye have 
taken." in accordance with his own plan, his '■'■ deterviinaie counsel and fore- 
Tcnowledge,''^ he accomplished the crucifixion of his son, and ^^ delivered" 
him into their " hands." Should any man feel disposed to quibble, and 
say, by his own words God went no further than to place Christ in the 
hands of his persecutors, let him give ear to another word of God. "Of a 
truth against thy holy child Jesus whom thou hast anointed, both Herod 
and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were 
gathered together for to do." Let me pause and inquire of the reviewer, 
have we not here all the hatred and lies and murderous intents of the 
Scribes and Pharisees " resulting in the death of God's son ?" Aye, and 
more too I for we have embraced all the cruelties of the Gentiles. Now, 
had God no plan, no agency in all this faithless, murderous hate of Jew 
and feraeltt« ? Let the Bible speak for God. All these " were gathered 
together" — be pleased to observe now — '■'■for to do what thy hand and thy 
counsel deterinined before to he done^ By the Bible, is not tiiat very trans- 
action most palpably "a scheme of Providence,''^ though apparently so 
infinitely removed from the knowledge and faitli of the author ? And has 
not this very fact been held up before the whole world, in every way, 
from the earliest ages ? Behold it in the institution of the Passover. On 
the fourteenth day of the montli '■'■the whole assembly of the congregation 
shall slay the Paschal Lamby Behold it, far earlier, for Christ is a lamb 
slain from the foundation of the world ! Nor let it be said, that all this is 
prediction only, '■^determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God^ Is not 
this planning f " What thy hand and thy counsel determined before to he 
done." Is not this ^^ a scheme?" The fact is, tlie doctrine in the New 
Englander lacks nothing but potency to desti"oy not the word of God only 
but his throne and his being. 

Finally, the unfortunate reviewer falls into th.e very pit which he digged 
for his brother. My chief objection to the doctrine under discussion is tliat 
shocking profanity which its author strives to lay to my charge, but of 
which he himself is the only and the eminently guilty party. The one 
distinguishing principle of the review is this: it makes God such an one as 



APPENDIX. 107 

man. Forgetting tliat God's exalted nature and relations place his rights 
and rule of action bej'ond all human comprehension ; and that man's rebel- 
lion against the law and Gospel makes it almost an impossibility for God 
to ivrong man : forgetting that he crosses an impassable gulph who goes 
from all the moralities which make up any one act of God to all the crimi- 
nalities which compose every wicked act of a wicked man, the author 
seems to have imbibed an astounding error, and to suppose that if the body 
of God's act and the body of man's act are but the same, then the moi-alUy 
of the two acts is the same. Acting therefore upon the principle that he 
understands all the deep things of God, and has found out the Almighty 
unto perfection, he decides that any guilty conduct of the creature makes 
God equally guilty if he embraces that conduct in his plan of providence. 
No doubt he speaks from the sincere opposition of his heart when he 
says, " Now, for our part, we are not going to ponder a stupendous scheme 
of providence, and admire it, and praise its author, when the same 
thing in man we call ' wickedness' and ' outrageous cruelty.' " Come, my 
thoughtless friend I bring your heart right up to God's face, and hear 
God's own mouth say, " / 'planned and predetermined the enslaving of 
Joseph " Does your heart dare to say, ^^ lam not going to admire you for 
it f Hark again to the word of God, " I planned and carried out all the 
m,urderous hate of the Scribes and Pharisees," How does your heart beat, 
friend? Are yon saying to God's face, "7a??i 7iot going to praise you for 
it V Is not all this rebellion against God, and a deliberate repudiation 
of the palpable Calvinism of the Scriptures ? 

Note C. 

" You mean me, and call me an abolitionist.''^ Friend, you are rude. I 
did not mean you. I did v.ot call you an abolitionist. I spake distinctly 
of the extremest man — tlie deistical aiuti-slavery man. I knew that 
you would make this charge, and burdened my sheets to give you no 
ground for it. I repeatedly admitted a partial similitude of sentiment, but 
distinguished you from the extreme man, exactly in the degree in which 
you had distinguished yourself from him, by your different sentiments and 
sympathies. Was not tliis perfectly just ? How comes it, friend, that no 
book, sermon, or paragraph assails the abolitionist, but you instantly start 
up and say, " You mean me!" I will tell you. You know that abolition- 
ism is a flagrant wrong, and you feel that you are too near to it. That is 
the secret. I have not charged you with abolitionism, but your own con- 
science confesses you are an accessory of the party indicted. 



108 APPENDIX. 

Suffer me to officiate as your teacher for a moment. In unconscious 
self-defence, you pronounce abolitionism perfectly insignificant and unwor- 
thy of notice. We have seen above, that you hug to your heart a great 
mistake on both points. The fact is, abolitionism in its nature is, hate, 
energy, and self-will personified : in its influence, the prominent agent of 
religious and political division : in its treatment, the first arm that should 
be broken to reunite the people : and in its force working vast results, by 
conversion and neutralization. There are three classes of anti-slavery sen- 
timent in the country. The two first — Fanatical and Christian — need no 
definition. The third and largest class of auti-sh'ivery men in North Ame- 
rica, are the neutrals, ^hey are middle-men, precisely; some of them 
nearer to one extreme, and some to the other, but all having this charac- 
teristic mark — perfectly, they have neither the had qualit}^ of the first nor 
the good quality of the second. I do not charge you with the malignity 
of the radical, but have you not lost the sympathies of the conservative? 
Do you cherish any reasonable interest in the Southern man and his slave ? 
Do you ever listen with fraternal sympathy to statements of advance in 
secularities, morals, or religion, amongst the masters or slaves? Do 
you spend one hearty dollar in Christian or benevolent enterprises at the 
South ? Friend 1 is h not a fact that your sympathies have been para- 
lysed? That your heart has been chilled? Have you not a half-way 
feeling as though you should not heartily a-pprove, admit, or admii'e any- 
thing as good and worthy at the South ; and do you not live along, to a great 
extent, spiritually incapable of any such open-hearted sincere fraternity as 
you do give to Northern men and objects, and should give to all ? Why, 
my friend, you are exactly half-way to abolitionism. There are but two 
steps, and you have taken the first. If not of you, it is true of more than 
half that stand by your side, that through a thousand channels, the spirit, 
principles, publications, and agencies of extreme men have something to 
do in destroying, in the mind, impartial estimation of the claims of the South. 
Say, friend, would he not be a blockhead who would take counsel cf you, 
and go to work to heal the broil of the nation, and point out the causes 
which have produced it, but say nothing of extreme anti-slavery sentiment. 
Your own outcry settles the question, and proves, first, the ivisdoyn, and 
next the efficiency, of that class of truths which you have felt so suitable to 
yourself. 



THE END. 



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